


False Flag

by faeleverte, Kathar



Series: Two-Man Rule [6]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Comic Book Violence, Depression, False Memories, M/M, Tissue Warning, Waarzegster (OC) - Freeform, exploding pineapples, post episode S01 E12 Seeds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-07
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-11 13:18:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1173518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faeleverte/pseuds/faeleverte, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kathar/pseuds/Kathar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Phil goes missing and SHIELD has other priorities, Skye turns to Ronin to help; Clint only wishes there was anything he could actually do. So when the opportunity to assist comes up during a mission to Lima, he takes it.</p><p>As difficult as rescuing Phil from Centipede was, rescuing him from himself in the aftermath may prove impossible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Magical Place

**Author's Note:**

> This is the start of a pretty tough arc for Clint and Phil, especially Phil. We’ve tagged for trigger warnings but not for spoilers. **If you prefer to be prepared for relationship drama (we do), check the end notes.**
> 
> A False Flag operation is designed to deceive in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities, groups or nations than those who actually planned and executed them. 
> 
> Our betas, whom we love and adore and cause much pain: Beta J and [Selana](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Selana/pseuds/Selana)\-- we could not do this without you.

Ward was watching over her shoulder as she packed. Skye tried very hard not to blush as she dug her bra out from underneath her covers, because of course he would never say anything but he was noticing, she knew he was noticing.

She’d done a thing last night that she hadn’t done in ages. She’d slipped under the covers fully dressed and then slowly wriggled out of her clothing until only her socks remained. Everything but the bra had been recovered in the scramble to get dressed after far too little time and even less sleep.

In the beginning the habit had been born of necessity-- sleep in enough drafty underheated institutional dorms of one kind of another and you learn how to stay warm and keep your secrets safe. It had long since become a stress release, curling into her cave and shedding her outer shell. Miles used to tease her about the random clothing that would end up in the hoard at the bottom of her bed. Ward probably would tease her if the situation weren’t what it was.

Right now, Skye wanted to be curling up somewhere warm and safe, but she was being kicked right back out instead. Thanks-no-thanks to Agent May.

Ward shuffled behind her and cleared his throat.

All her meager clothing was in her bags now, and Skye emptied her bedside drawer quickly, dumping everything in willy-nilly. Into the bag went her makeup case, laptop, toiletries bag, battered copy of _A Wrinkle in Time_ (shut up, Ward, you don’t know), the little wallet that held all her random-ass gift cards and coffee cards and That One Card.

That One Card that had been waiting for her on her bed the morning Everything Happened. It’d looked like a buy-10-smoothies-get-1-free card from The Beanery. 

She would have sworn the backside was blank when she picked it up. The heat from her fingers must have triggered something, because when she turned it over it had handwriting on it, and that handwriting said:

_Okay, I suck at this, but please believe I’m only here to help you. Call me if you need help. This card will find me anywhere. Keep Him safe._

Nearly as soon as she put it down, the card shivered-- such a tiny motion she thought she was hallucinating until the words faded back into the stock.

If it _was_ cardstock.

Skye looked up, straight into Ward’s impassive lantern jaw, now twitching slightly. He tried to smile down at her, though it came out as more of a pitiful half-assed grimace. She knew how he felt. 

“C’mon,” he said briefly, looking over his shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah, only packing up my life here,” she hissed back at him, before brushing deliberately past his arm as she stalked out of her (former) bunk, all her most important belongings in hand.

Just like she’d come onto the Bus, except with fewer boxes and down a van.

And plus some dubious information about her parents.

And down one CO and several people she’d hoped were her friends.

What a great trade-off.

____

As it turned out, she _wasn’t_ down a team after all, and Ward was a damned sweetheart, and Skye was plenty good enough to disappear out the back of the Bus with that many random people in black uniforms walking around.

She had a lot of practice disappearing into crowds.

They were going to get Himself back, goddamnit. She was going to get him back. That was never even a _question,_ that was just the reality of the fucking situation. This _was_ her skillset; hacking and sneaking and hanging on by the skin of her teeth. But she wasn’t going to be doing it herself this time, the team had her back-- pity they couldn’t literally have her back.

And Ronin said he had her back, just like he always had.

The Beanery card burned a hole in her pocket, as Skye pulled open the door of the coffee shop and stepped into line.

Of course it was from Ronin; it _had_ to be. The man who’d provided her the information she needed to hack into the SHIELD databases that had brought her to Himself’s attention. The man who’d eased her through several crises, before she’d decided that she couldn’t keep on using him. He was Rising Tide, he was in it for the inside information she could pass onto him, or so he’d said, but he’d sometimes seemed like her only lifeline to the sane world, during those early breathless days on the Bus. 

The information she’d passed had been largely useless but it still wasn’t worth the risk-- or the growing feeling of disloyalty-- after the Miles Incident and the Coming of the Tracking Bracelet. It was better to drop Ronin, and all the furtive texts and protocols and ciphers.

Ronin hadn’t dropped her, clearly-- and he hadn’t dropped his interest in the Bus-- as she’d found out in about the worst freakin’ way possible when Coulson had found a spy cam implanted in his office and it had turned out to be Ronin’s. (Well, he’d told her to stop tracking it, so she’d assumed.) Skye had… well, it was a whole long story, but in the end, she’d actually been kind of proud of the way she’d handled it, sticking with the team and backing them up even when she figured she was about to meet Ronin face to face and have him ruin her entire life. 

But whoever the fuck Ronin actually was-- and during the chase in his pursuit she’d had time to imagine a lot of people-- he was clearly about ten times as badass as she’d thought, because he’d gotten clean away like it was nothing. And he’d told her he’d be watching.

Which, y’know, gulp.

Latte in hand, Skye sat down at the table and set up her laptop, and she couldn’t deny there was a little anticipation underneath everything. God had she missed this. Even as she hit the power button she wasn’t sure if she’d contact Ronin, using the card or otherwise. 

He might be SHIELD, spying on Coulson himself. He might be from one of the many enemy organizations out there, just buttering her up. Centipede itself, even.

It would be, really, frankly, fucking _stupid_ to contact him, to risk trusting him with this, when she just had to do a little entry-level hacking into some financial data--

The SHIELD icon mocked her from her screen.

That fucking Agent Hand. That goddamn, fucking, robotic, Sarah Fucking Palin heeled Agent Hand. 

Coulson would never have done this to her, but clearly the freedom he’d given her could be taken away with barely a thought.

She should just call Ronin. She should-- 

No. No, Skye was damn good. She could do this on her own, old school.

Right?  
________

The forty-fifth time the little rubber ball thumped against the side of the van, Natasha grabbed it on the rebound and flung it at Clint’s forehead.

“Ow!” he said as it dropped into his waiting hand. 

“Do not make me take you out before we even _start_ this mission, Clint,” she hissed at him. Clint sulked a bit, mostly for show, before shoving it back into his pocket with a sigh.

“ _Thank you_ , Agent Romanov,” Agent Blake said, from his seat near the surveillance monitors. “That was quite enough of that.” 

Clint swung back to Nat, batting his eyes like Lucky begging for pizza. Her eyebrow raise was unambiguous (well, to him, anyway-- and Phil, if Phil’d been there): _make it a clean kill and hide the body._ Shifting his body slightly to hide the sound of velcro, Clint began to dig into one of his belt pouches, looking for the yo-yo he still had stored in it. (Look, it was for an op, really it was, and if you got enough force on one of those things going in just the right direction, they could do a hell of a lot of damage.)

Luckily, perhaps, for the fate of the world, Agent Blake chose that moment to get up, adjust himself thoughtfully, and make his way towards the back door of the van. He brushed far too close to them both as he did, and hopped out without a word.

“It's a call from Hand,” Natasha told Clint. “Sounds like we might get our marching orders soon.”

“At fucking last.” Clint tipped himself over so that he was lying down with his legs splaying up the side of the van. He could feel Natasha looking at him, and smiled back up at her.

“It’s been a long time since it’s just been you and me,” she said.

“And Blake.”

“Blake for now. No Blake soon.”

“No Blake starting now,” Agent Blake was getting a hell of a lot better at blank-face, and at sneaking up on people. He was leaning on the open van door, and jerked his thumb behind him. “Hand says we’ve got confirmation on the targets in the area. You’re going to get into position. She thinks comms may be monitored, so you’ll get the standard blips. One for go, two for ready, three for abort, etcetera etcetera.” 

Who the fuck actually pronounced every syllable in the damn word, anyway? Clint wasted no time in doing a backwards somersault to his feet; he slipped on his quiver as he rolled, and had his bow case in hand by the time he was fully standing. Blake just rolled his eyes; Natasha snorted.  
____

“At last we are alone!” 

“Oh, god, Nat,” Clint jumped as she pressed herself to his back. “You can’t do that to a guy. What has you so squirrely?” 

“Your situational awareness has gone to hell. And who's squirrely? Me? How about you, Steve McQueen?” Nat slipped under Clint’s arm, and he obligingly pulled them both down to rest on the sheet-shrouded sofa that sat across from the window, where the lowering skies were making it difficult to track time. Natasha had only just finished booby trapping the doors behind them while Clint was double-checking the balcony for structural integrity. It was going to be their launching point for the operation-- wouldn’t do to have it crumble before they’d jumped off it.

“I haven’t heard from Phil in a couple days,” he said as she threw a leg over his. “And his team was going into some serious shit.” He drew a nervous finger down her arm to play with her Widow’s Bite. Natasha cocked her head at him.

“Coulson can usually take care of himself, and he has some serious backup on his team. Not seeing him on your voyeuristic little shower cam for a few days isn’t cause for panic.”

“We should never have told you about-- anyway we’re past that.”

“Please don’t tell me he moved the camera to--”

“No! God… no, we, here,” Clint shifted far enough to dig a little metal business card case from the internal pocket on his belt, and handed it to her. Natasha flipped it twice, looking it over carefully, then handed it back. Her eyebrow asked him to explain. “Stark made these for me. There’s a directional cam in them. Two way, private channel, some pretty heavy duty encryption. I gave one to Phil before he left my apartment, that day you saw him. We’ve been in communication at least once a day since then. Until now.”

“He tells you about his ops over that? Clint?”

“No, no, I… heard about this one through other means. These people he’s going up against, Nat, they’re… they’re special fucking shit and no mistake. Super soldiers. And he’s been out of contact too long. Nat-- what?” She’d sat up straight, and turned wide eyes on him.

“Super soldiers? Project Centipede?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit… Clint. Shit.”

“Shit _what_ , Nat?”

“That’s who they’re sending us against. Did you not pay attention to Blake at all?”

“I did, but I never heard him say that name--”

“He _didn’t_ , I’m not sure he knows. But Hand’s top cop on the op, and all the intel fits. Clint, were you too busy thinking about Coulson’s ass to pay attention?”

“Yes, because I was worried. And apparently I’m right to be worried. This is a coordinated op. Against Centipede. He must have found something.” He thoughtfully turned the Clint cam over in his hands before popping it back in its hiding spot and continuing. “He was too casual about it, Nat. I couldn’t tell if it was pre-mission nerves or what.”

“Hard to tell on something that small,” she said, sliding closer to him again.

“It is, that’s why I had to see him in person. The night before they left,” he added, at her grunt of inquiry.

“What did he say?”

“Not a lot more. We… got a little distracted. A lot distracted. So he didn’t say much… well. He didn’t say much about _that_.” He’d said some other things, though. Well, hadn’t said so much as implied. So had Clint. Natasha was frowning at him, as if she could see right into his head and read his memories, Phil’s gasped endearments, the little _loves_ that seemed to escape him despite himself. Clint’s own near begging to keep Phil as long as he could fucking manage.

It was messed up, was what it was. They’d never had this Before.

“Well. You had your mind played with, and he died,” Natasha responded, and Clint blinked up at her. “Oh, did you not mean to say that out loud? Clint, dear one,” she took his chin in her hands and pressed her forehead to his. “You cannot fool me any better now than either of you could in your own apartment. Whatever you two have been doing, it’s gotten out of hand for you both.”

“It’s not… I wouldn’t say out of hand, Nat. Okay, it’s moving quickly, but...” _it feels so fucking good. It’s the first time I’ve seen a light at the end of the fucking tunnel and not heard a train whistle. It feels like time._ “... we’ve got some time to make up for,” he finished, knowing it sounded lame.

“You’re also not supposed to know he’s alive, and he’s not supposed to be in contact with you, for a start.” Clint shrugged.

“Water under the bridge. I _got him back_ , Nat.”

“Did you? Fully? You’d thought things had changed. He didn’t know why. Are you certain--”

“It’s all him? Mostly. Something happened, you’re right. And whatever it was, SHIELD’s played really dirty, I have a feeling. Phil’s got a feeling. Heh. Pheeling. But I’m certain it’s something we can work through together, Nat. I’ll get Phil through this. You’ll see.”

Natasha hummed, and went silent in his arms for a while, watching the warehouse window across the street. They waited for the ping in their ears that would signal the op. Eventually, she laid back and put her legs up on the edge of the sofa, pillowing her head in Clint’s lap and looking up at him. 

“Has he been out to Portland yet?” she asked.

And she’d effectively pinned him before asking, goddamn her to hell.

“N-- no? Not that he said. No… I’m the only person he told, he told me that.” Right. The only person. Put _that_ in your pipe, Natasha. “Well, up until you and Kate walked in on us. She still thinks he’s dead.”

“That’s harsh.” Clint shrugged violently, as if he could fling the entire issue away if he tried.

“That’s between the two of them. I never tried to get between whatever that was, you know that.”

“Did you ever want to?”

“God no. No, why would I have? Nat, my darling jerk, d’you think I ever had any illusions about us? After all this time? You know me, you knew _us_ … before. Phil and I were just-- okay, not _just_ sex. We were… _and_ sex. We worked together, we played together, and sometimes we got off together. All right, lots of times we got off together. And sometimes we got off not together, and sometimes I had other people, and sometimes he had other people. And one of them was--”

“Her.”

“Yeah. And… yeah, he cared a lot about her. What did that have to do with me? He had me and her, just like I had him and you.”

“Clint… you and I don’t have sex.”

“Anymore.”

“Anymore.”

“But we had, before SHIELD. And Phil never cared. He knows you and I… he knows you mean the fucking world to me Nat, and he’d never make me chose, and I’d never make him chose.”

“Because you thought he’d choose her.”

“Well no fuck. I mean, have you _seen_ her? But I knew that was gonna come someday. He’d marry her, and we’d stop fucking, but hey, I’d still have him as my friend. So. I’d be his you, like you’re my… you. And that’s okay. That’s fine.”

“Clint… you are such an idiot sometimes.”

“No, it’s okay! Really. I mean, I know I wouldn’t be quite like you to him, god, because there’s only one you, Nat. You and I…” he was going to gain new muscles from all the shrugging he was doing, really. “You and I _are_. But whatever, because _he’s_ back, and he hasn’t gone to her, and you know what? So maybe he’s scared or doesn’t want to bring her into this, or thinks she’s better off, I don’t care. It means I have a chance to prove I can… to prove I can… to prove…. I have a _chance._ And I think I _want_ that chance. Now. God, I should fucking thank SHIELD, shouldn’t I? I should thank SHIELD and Loki for all this fucking shit they put me through, for all they… for all… but I’m here for Phil because of it and I can help him and maybe I can even be what he needs right now.”

Nat swallowed, nodded, and looked down. Clint thought she never looked so beautiful as when she was letting him see her worry about him. It was so deliberate, so careful, so much more intimate than a hug, and so tiny. So _Nat_. 

If Phil had ever asked him to give up Nat, he’d have… done something drastic. Run away, maybe. And he’d never have asked anything of Phil that he couldn’t have done himself.

(More accurately, he’d never have asked anything of Phil that would make him leave Clint more quickly. If you were headed at some theoretical brick wall, would you want to know how long you’d have till you hit it?)

“Just so you understand,” Natasha said, quietly, “I am fully capable of putting him back in his grave, if he hurts you.”

“I’d never let you do that.”

“I know. But I want you to know I’d want to.” She looked up, “Even if you cause it by your own idiocy. Clint, your pocket is vibrating.”

So it was, on the outside of his thigh. She was pressed so closely to him she’d felt it first. As Clint twisted to retrieve the phone-- not _his_ phone, the burner phone, oh fuck shit the burner phone-- Natasha undulated to her feet and crossed to the window.

“‘Lo?” Clint said, and shook his head as he did. When had his voice gone so rough? He didn’t `have any reason to be afraid, just because Phil hadn’t checked in, and the phone that was ringing, well only one person had that number….

“Manscaping.”

“You seriously need better safewords, Skye.”

“Say it.”

Clint sighed.

“Guyliner.”

“Ronin! It really is you isn’t it? God, you sound hot. I mean… old. I mean… hold on a sec, I’ve gotta check no one’s here yet.”

“No one’s where? Skye? You’re not calling me to chat, what the _hell_ went wrong? Is Ph-- is He safe?” 

“Wait. First.”

“First?”

“This is serious.” There was shuffling in the background. “You’ve got to promise me. You’ve _got_ to promise me I’m doing the right thing calling you. Because, well, because after Witchita I had you figured for a bad guy, but you’ve kinda hinted that you know AC-- Himself-- somehow. I mean, you left me this damn card on the Bus when it was on a SHIELD base, so either he trusts you on the Bus or SHIELD does so… shit. Shit. I’m trusting you here. I’m doing the right thing, right? Say something?”

“Fuck. He’s in trouble, isn’t he? Is he hurt? No-- captured. Centipede’s captured him. Shit. We don’t have _time_ for this.” Natasha whipped around and stared at him. 

There was a very long pause.

“I made a big mistake, didn’t I?” Her voice was so small, so tentative Clint nearly kicked himself.

“What? No. Why-- oh. The time thing. Look, you’re not wrong. I’m just trying to look after Him, like you are. I don’t trust SHIELD to do it.” Anymore. Time past, that would have been ludicrous to say, and Phil would have told him so. But time past, Clint would have been the first to fucking know if something were wrong with Phil because he would have been right there next to him. 

“Yeah, well, that makes two of us. Okay. Okay--fine. You and I, we’re going to talk more about this later. But right now, well-- if this comes back to bite Him on the ass I’m going to take you _out_ , Ronin.”

“I believe you. Now _tell me what happened and how I can help._ ”

Skye told him. How Phil-- like a total jackass-- had gone with Mike Peterson to the exchange and been taken hostage. (Hadn’t Clint _told_ him not to pull shit like that? Did he think he had some kind of fucking guardian angel? Because if he did, it was a complete moron and speaking of, what kind of stupid-ass perch had that been for Agent Ward?) How Agent Hand had kicked her off the Bus, but the team had her back (Okay, fine, Ward was forgiven-- a little). About the tracking bracelet shutting everything down. The combination of plausibility, wanton destruction and quick thinking she’d used to get herself into the same house with the data she needed. 

And now she was waiting for her mark to come home, and she was planning on pretending to be Agent May (bigger balls than Clint had, he would be the first to admit it) and was there _any_ way he could find the information for her instead, because she was afraid she was running out of time and she just wanted to _go find AC_.

God, how Clint wanted her to, too. How very badly he wanted her to.

“Skye,” he said, and he hoped his voice wasn’t breaking too obviously. “I can’t help.”

“Or won’t?”

“Can’t, goddamn it. I am… I am so far from any place I could hack into anything for you without being caught it’s not funny. And anything I could do… it might only hurt you.” If Centipede really did have a tap into the SHIELD communication devices, it almost certainly would hurt her. The burner phone should be safe, but it was a goddamn flip phone. “Please believe me, I would do anything to help if I could.” Goddamnit no--no choking up, Barton.

Just because you failed her again.

“Okay, okay, well I better--”

“No, wait. Skye, listen to me just a minute. You’ve got this. I promise you. I’ve watched you, all that time in the Rising Tide. You’ve got more potential in one line of code than the lot of ‘em put together. The shit you can do scares me sometimes.”

“That’s computers.”

“That’s you. You _gamed Quinn,_ Skye. You didn’t just game him, you _gamed Himself_ for a while.”

“I… feel bad about that.”

“I wouldn’t be telling you this if you didn’t. You’re going to be a kickass Agent May, and you’re gonna think on your feet and be brilliant and get the data you need. Then you’re gonna call me again and tell me you did so that I don’t go fucking crazy with worry, and we’ll see if there’s not something I can do then. Okay?”

“Okay. Ronin?”

“Yeah.”

“That… thanks. That actually helps.”

“Fuck that shit, this isn’t anything you haven’t done before.”

“Impersonating a SHIELD agent and holding someone hostage in their own home until I trick them into revealing all their secrets?”

“Well, when you put it _that_ way….” Clint could hear her smiling. “Your own team would tell you this if they were there: you’ll kick ass.”

When he hung up, Natasha was already by his side. Clint relayed the few pieces of information she couldn’t have guessed by herself, while pulling her against his chest. She let him hold her, evening out her breathing deliberately, softly, her stomach expanding and contracting into his until his breathing came down into sync with hers.

“If there was any chance Coulson was here, they wouldn’t have sent us,” Natasha murmured in his ear. Clint felt himself nod, though the rest of his body had gone numb. “We’re the distraction. Well, us and at least half a dozen other strike teams. We’re all running distraction for each other. Coordinated strike.”

Clint nodded again, then swallowed around the lump in his throat.

“Problem is, if Skye’s right, in the time it takes to coordinate the strike Phil could be….”

“Not dead. He’s too valuable alive. To anybody.”

“Alive isn’t the same as well, Nat. Whatever they-- and I think I mean ‘we’-- did to his body, I’ll bet you Centipede wants to know about it. I don’t… _Christ_.” His eyes were prickling, his hands were starting to shake, and Nat tightened her arms and pulled him down into a heap on the floor. “We were just starting to get there… put so much work into getting him better… don’t want him showing up broken again. I can’t… I can’t stand to see him like that.” He was staring, but he didn’t know at what; the room was a blur in front of him, Nat’s hands a distant softness. 

“Clint, Clint, come back to me.” Her voice came from far away. “Of course you can, if you have to. Of course you can. You can, you have, you will again. Clint, darling, idiot, stay with me. We have an op to run. I swear I will kill you if you let me down.”

Clint stiffened against her, and she cursed, low and Russian. 

“But you won’t let me down,” she said after a moment. “You never have.”

“Be the first time anyone could say that about me, Nat.”

“Nonsense. Coulson would say exactly the same thing. Clint, please, get up for me. Sit by me. Here, drink. You won’t let me down, you won’t let Coulson down. What is this?”

“I… don’t know. It’s… hell. It’s not very _me_ , is it?”

“No, it isn’t. You usually react to stress by going out and punching things or getting drunk or, occasionally, having dubious sexual encounters.”

“I can’t do any of those things on ops, Nat.” 

“Oh?”

“Okay, that one time outside Chiapas, I suppose, but there was a _lot_ of downtime, and Phil was in his field suit, and we managed to get all the goats into custody anyway, so that doesn’t count, right?” Nat had pulled back to look at him with a furrowed brow. “Oh, God, you didn’t know about that one, did you?”

“Well, it certainly explains how you lost your pants. I was referring to the punching, Clint.”

“I could use some therapeutic punching right now. When is Blake going to let us go in?”

Nat heaved a sigh, and Clint felt the pressure of it against his ribs.

“I wish I knew. Would you like me to go find him?”

“No. Stay with me. I’ll be all right.” He would. He could already feel himself settling. “Nat? Thank you.”

“You’re fine, Clint. I just want my partner back.”

“You’ll get him. He’s nearly here.” 

She stroked a bit of hair from his forehead.

“No, your brain’s still off with Coulson, and Skye, and Kate, and your dog, and everyone but yourself.”

“Have… have I been… do you feel… I haven’t been ignoring you, Nat, you’ve just seemed to be doing, well, your own thing.”

“I’ve been giving you space. Helping them seemed to be helping you. But this?” She squeezed him to emphasize his collapsed state. “Does none of you any good. So. We will get through this, and your Skye and his team will get Coulson back, and then you and I will talk about how this never happens again. Because you are not allowed to leave me.”

“Oh, Nat,” he pressed his forehead against her clavicle. “You do fine without me.”

“Of course I do,” she snapped. “That has nothing to do with wanting you around. You’re _mine_ , Clint Barton. I stole you back from a god, and I’m keeping you.”

“Might regret that; I’m not really paper trained.”

“Clint. Idiot. I only mean your mind. You can’t get so lost following Coulson, no matter how much you love him--” she pressed a hand over his mouth when he started to protest-- “that you lose your mind again. You frightened me, and I won’t have it. I don’t care if you disappear for months-- well, I do, but you’re not without the ability to take care of yourself-- as long as this thing,” she tapped his forehead, “is on straight.”

He didn’t say anything; there was nothing _to_ say. Love Phil? It… wasn’t worth thinking about if they didn’t get him back, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about that. He couldn’t promise her anything, because he didn’t know what Phil might need, and he’d never yet let Phil down. Nat could look after herself, she always had. Phil… he didn’t know what Centipede might be doing, and he didn’t know what SHIELD had done, but whatever it was he was going to fix it. 

“Clint,” Natasha broke into his reverie, “your thigh is buzzing again.”

He pulled the phone out of his pocket so fast it slipped, and he juggled it between his hands for a moment before he could answer it.

“Mansca--”

“Skye! Tell me there’s something I can do.”

“Nothing right now-- shit, unless you can get this state trooper off my tail.”

“You can’t outrun him?”

“Of course I can outrun him, Ronin, but he has a radio and I don’t need him calling all his buddies. I’ve seen how that story ends, and it ends with me going off a cliff just ahead of about a dozen squad cars, and I don’t like that idea--”

“Skye, where the hell are you?”

“Somewhere in the desert. Headed out of Oakland towards the Mojave--”

“Why-- nevermind. Give me a moment.” He pressed the hold button hard, then started typing in another number. Waiting while it rang was hell, but when a gravely, grumpy voice answered he grumped right back at it. A few minutes and about three phone calls later, Clint switched back to Skye’s line. She was still babbling in the background about bears and front doors and bogeys. Finally, he heard the babbling cease, and then a sudden

“Huh,” distant through the line. “He just turned off the siren and waved at me. How did you do that?”

Clint laughed.

“Hacking into financial data I can’t do for you from here. Getting state law enforcement in that entire area to ignore things? That used to be all in a day’s work. Now. Tell me what’s happening.”

“I think I know where they’ve got Himself. I’m on my way there.”

“Your team meeting you?”

“Going to call them next; wanted to let you know. I… I’m afraid they won’t be able to convince Agent Hand. She’s been really damn set against going after AC for some reason.”

“Ah. Well.” Clint glanced over at Natasha, who raised both eyebrows back at him. “Maybe I can help with that, too.”

“You what?”

“Give me three minutes, then call your team. I guarantee you Agent Hand will have bigger things to worry about.” Clint hung up on Skye’s spluttering response.

“You want to jump the gun and go take out that Centipede cell on our own, without authorization, without backup, and without--” Natasha sat back on her haunches and watched him.

“Agent Blake. Yep. Problems with that?”

“We don’t want them to alert any other bases.”

“So we do it real quiet-like. You in?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” Natasha stood and went to the window. Clint followed her, sliding on his quiver and popping out his bow as he did. They looked down over the empty roof of the warehouse. 

“Gonna warn Blake?”

“Good heavens no, that would be breaking protocol. He’ll figure it out.” She patted Clint on the cheek. He smiled down at her.

“I’ve missed this too, Nat,” he said, and fired a grappling arrow at the parapet opposite them. 

Nat was still looking up at him as she dropped down onto the line and slid down it to the warehouse. Clint double-checked the knots fastening it to the stone rail of the balcony, and followed her.

As he slid, wind rushing in his ears, he could have sworn he heard Agent Blake break radio silence and begin to curse.

____

 

The Centipede lab was in chaos. SHIELD’s science teams in their lab coats or HAzMat suits going one way with arms and carts loaded with boxes and bottles. Teams from engineering in their dark suits were pushing their own carts, still mostly empty and going deeper into the building, a few starting to trickle back with computers and things that looked like giant electronic torture devices. All the regular field agents and security personnel were bumping around in the middle, collecting prisoners that they herded first one way and then another. 

Blake was not good at organizing a seamless cleanup. He knew the job, but he never had figured out how to ride herd on the chaotic thinkers of SHIELD like Phil had. No one ran ops as well as Phil, though.

And where the fuck was Phil, anyway. Clint pushed the button on the case in his hand, watching the logo slowly flash, knowing each glow was a pulse of light, a vibration, a wave of gentle warmth on the other end. The end Phil should have had on his person. Word was coming in that all strikes were wrapping, worldwide, so _where was Phil_?

Skye and her team had to have gotten to him by now, and Clint _knew_ she would have the right location. She was damn good at what she did. Skye would have called him if they were wrong or too late… No. Shut up. The team got to Phil. Clint was sure of it.

The hurrying crowds veered around Clint’s scowl as he stalked through the lab. He’d learned early that a hard expression and determined step made people think you knew where you were going and that you belonged where you were. No one tried to stop him. Most of the lab rats tried desperately not to look at him.

He pressed the button on the cam again and turned down an empty hall. The light flashed slowly as he found a stripped office with a closet door standing open at the far side.

Perfect.

He propped a chair under the doorknob of the outer door as he crossed to the closet. The only things left in it were a bucket in the corner and a stack of paper on a shelf. He hip-bumped the door shut, kicked the bucket over to sit on, and pressed the button again. 

Flash

Flash

Flash

Phil.

_PHIL._

Clint’s heart stopped. 

Phil was battered and bruised, wearing a sweat-and-blood-stained undershirt, and he was the most gorgeous damned thing Clint had ever laid eyes on. Clint choked on tears of relief and residual fear and… other emotions as he studied the tiny screen. Then his blood ran cold as Phil’s face caught the light, and Clint could begin to catalogue the damage.

There were still flecks of blood on his face from the nasty gouge above his eyebrow, both cheekbones were bruised, some of the discoloration spreading over his eye toward his hairline, split lips, barely-cleaned blood from his nose, and his cheeks and chin bore two days worth of stubble. But Phil’s eyes were the worst: blank, dead voids where there had always been such pools of warmth. Clint felt all the air leave his lungs, and he slid off the bucket, landing hard to sit on the floor of the closet, knuckles turning white as he clutched the aluminum case.

“Oh my god, babe,” he whispered. “Look at you. You’re… oh fuck. But you’re back, right?” He frantically scanned the background, studying the bits of Phil’s office that he could see. “You’re on the Bus.”

“Clint,” Phil said, and his image wavered like his hands were shaking around the camera. “I… I’m back. But… how… where did you get the intel that I was missing in the first place?”

“I… Nat and I… we were sent in on a raid at one of the other Centipede labs.” He smiled into the camera, trying desperately to coax the expression of hopeless fear off Phil’s face. “Took ‘em down, boss,” Clint said. “Slick as shit. You’d have been proud of us.”

Phil hummed noncommittally, obviously not listening. Clint’s heart constricted. 

Had it really been just three days since Clint had worshiped Phil’s body and had his own worshiped in return? Just over 72 hours since they had twisted together in the dark, since Phil had left the fingerprint bruises that still speckled Clint’s hips. What could have turned that man, the fire and passion, the tenderness and possessiveness into… this?

“It was… it was all over SHIELD,” Clint told him. Deflect. “Level 8 agent taken. All identified Centipede labs and holdings to be raided. So we knew we were taking them down, and it had been your mission to begin with. Wasn’t too hard to piece together.”

Clint watched Phil’s fingers come into the frame to pinch the bridge of his nose. Headache: stress, dehydration, possible head injury, with the contusion at his hairline. Phil flinched when his fingers hit a bruise, and Clint hissed in sympathy.

“What’d they do to you, babe?” Clint asked. The less Phil responded, the more Clint wanted to reach through the screen, touch, hold, protect, beat the fuck out of anyone who had harmed his lo... Phil. “How did they take you? Did you do something heroic and brave again? We talked about that!” Phil didn't laugh. "What happened?”

“It was just an op gone wrong, Clint,” Phil said. Phil’s eyes were flickering around the room, never settling on the camera. “They captured me. Wanted some information from me. Didn’t get it.”

“‘Course not,” Clint answered with a snort. “You’re unbreakable. No one’s ever gotten anything from you.” Phil paled, and Clint shivered at the expression that crossed his face.

“I’m… I’ll be… I have to go,” Phil said, closing his eyes. Clint couldn’t look away from the fan of thick lashes on the delicate, sleepless-bruised skin. 

Clint heard the beep of his in-ear comm, and Blake started bellowing for Hawkeye to report for debrief. Clint yanked out the comm and dropped it on the floor beside his boot.

“Please, babe,” he begged. He wasn’t sure what he was asking for: Phil’s attention, some reassurance, anything. “Phil, come on. Are you okay?”

Phil turned his attention back to the Clint Cam, and his eyes were dark, angry as he snapped, “I have to go. Don’t c… W... Wait for my call.”

The screen went black, and Clint returned to swearing, hands clumsy as he closed the case and slid it back into a side pocket on his pants. He scooped up his comm unit, and tucked it back in his ear. He was pressing the switch to activate it when the door opened, and Natasha’s red hair framed her face in the opening. She lifted one eyebrow at him.

“Hawkeye reporting,” he snapped to the commline, shaking his head at her. She offered a hand, and he grabbed it, clinging, as she pulled him to his feet. “Needed some intel. On my way in now. Hawkeye out.”

“Did you make contact?” she asked as Clint slipped out the door of the closet and stood too close to her.

“I did,” Clint answered. “Something is very wrong.”

She looped her arm around his and pressed her cheek against his shoulder for a long breath before turning and tugging him toward the hallway.

“Let’s get to Blake before he starts asking more stupid questions,” she said, not unkindly.

 

___

 

Phil hadn’t been in his office long enough to do more than slip off his ruined shirt when he heard the soft hum from his secret drawer that signaled a call on the Clint Cam. He had drawn it out mechanically, opening it, desperate to see Clint, hoping he was home, curled on his sofa with the one-eyed dog looking over his shoulder, panting happily at Phil’s voice.

Instead, he had activated the view screen to find Agent Barton, SHIELD’s top sharpshooter, dressed in a tacsuit (not even his Hawkeye uniform; it was strictly SHIELD-issue), comm unit in his ear, an unfamiliar space behind him, obviously on a mission. A mission for SHIELD. Clint’s boss. _Phil’s_ boss. The people who had… done… _that_.

Not much of the conversation registered after that realization.

He had hung up on Clint. Pressed the button, closed the lid, and hung up on Clint. Staring at the silver case clenched in his fist, Phil couldn’t tell how much time had passed before he realized his hand was shaking. 

“Goddamnit, Clint,” he sighed, pressing the Clint Cam to his chest with both hands. “You should have waited. I know you were worried. I _know_ you were worried, but I’m not ready for you yet. I need time to work through this before I can even begin to explain it to you. I just… Dammit, Barton!”

Phil slumped in his desk chair and laid the case gently on the blotter on his desk. He shivered at the image that flashed through his mind of spreading Clint across that same blotter just days before. The memory was like watching someone else playing in the heat and fire of that glorious body. He could picture his own hands stroking over the scarred, perfect skin of Clint’s torso and thighs, could see Clint swallowing him down with that blissful expression. But he could not conjure up the touch memory, couldn’t remember how it had _felt._

“Of course I’m not ‘okay,’” Phil told the cam, stroking the smooth silver finish with one fingertip. “Do you know what they did to me? They cut my head open, and played with my brain. I think they ripped apart everything that ever made me… _me_.”

A tear tickled a path down over the bruises on his cheek, and he impatiently flicked it away.

“It hurt… everywhere. Felt like they were firing every nerve in my body manually. So much pain. But it wasn’t just the pain. I was trapped there. They were trying to bring me back, and my body wanted to die, and I was just… there. Just being kept there. And it hurt, and I…” He blinked away a few more tears.

“Is this why nothing works the way it used to? Did they erase who I was before and have to rewrite it all from scratch? Told me I could clear the chamber, but not actually teach me how to do it? Explain what masturbating was but leave no trace of the muscle memory?”

He took a shuddering breath, leaning his elbows on the desk, curled protectively around the link to the one person he wanted to talk to, explain to, _see_ \-- the one person he did not dare let see how damaged he was. Clint had always relied on Phil to have the answers, to be in control. What would he do now that Phil had lost all of that, when the questions didn’t seem to _have_ answers? Would the doubt show in Clint’s eyes, his voice? Would his hands and mouth be too cautious, too gentle, suddenly unfamiliar like the memories of sand and salt and ocean breezes? As unfamiliar as the new images of pain and fear and shouting himself hoarse? 

“I don’t know what’s real anymore, Clint,” Phil whispered, leaning over his desk until his lips brushed the cool metal of the still-closed cam. “Are these feelings mine? These thoughts? Did they just stick all of this in my head, all the memories, everything? Tell me what’s real.” 

For a long time, he was silent, eyes closed as he steadied his breathing. He ignored the tears that were tracking down his cheeks, dripping off the tip of his nose. He tried not to think, not to remember, not to feel. 

A memory assaulted him, of Clint sitting in the desert, head thrown back in joy, hair bleached from the sun, nose peeling. Phil remembered the way Clint had tasted when, unable to resist the sight, Phil’s mouth had covered Clint’s smile, swallowing down his laughter, getting drunk on the softness of Clint’s tongue.

Another image invaded: a beautiful face with eyes full of tears as he wished her luck in Portland. How he’d pressed his lips to her temple, trying to memorize the smell of her hair and the way her body curved into his. Maybe he could have gone with her, but he had a job, a team to oversee, and a man, all in New York. And it was surprisingly easy for him to get a flight out to watch her perform, take her to dinner, spend the night with her in his arms.

“I don’t know how to separate real from fake, truth from lies. What is memory and what was added later? And _why_?”

He suddenly jumped to his feet, snatching up the camera and striding across the room to the hidden drawer with a biometric lock. He had left it standing open after retrieving the Clint Cam, and he reached back inside cautiously. His thumb trailed across a wide purple ribbon, and he jerked his hand back as if it had been burned before he took a deep breath and brushed the ribbon aside. He grabbed a folded black t-shirt, lifting it to press it to his nose, bumping the drawer shut with his hip. 

“You left this here, right?” Phil slipped the cam in his back pocket, so he could hold the shirt out in front of him. “That part was real, wasn’t it? The things that came after? After they…”

Phil dropped to the couch, half-sprawled on his back, and dropped the T-shirt over his face, pressing both hands into the fabric. He screamed then, muffled by palms and jersey knit. He screamed until he was hoarse, hoping none of his team was near enough to hear, but the door was locked, so they could listen all they wanted.

What did it matter anymore, really? They surely could see he was broken.

He screamed again, but the sounds from his raw throat slowly gave way to choked sobs, shoulders beginning to heave. He finally pulled Clint’s shirt off his face, holding it over his chest, pressed above the scars from the Asgardian Asshole.

“What don’t I remember from before, Clint? What have I missed? They knew so much, about me, about my past. They knew about my parents, but I don’t think that would be so hard to find.” Phil smiled weakly at the skylight, dampness collecting in the corners of his red-rimmed eyes. “But Raina knew about _her_ , Clint. She knew about Portland and the music, the things she made me think when I was with her. The beauty and the calm and the hope for something solid, real, sane... I don’t know if I believe that she loved m… I don’t want to believe…”

He took a deep, steadying breath and rolled onto his side. He stuffed the wadded shirt under his head to pillow his cheek, and tugged the cam out of his pocket, turning it over and over in his hands.

“I didn’t believe dead men could get up, either. Before.”

Phil was silent for several minutes, tears still trickling down his cheek and into Clint’s shirt, but his breath slowly eased.

“They didn’t know about you, though, babe,” Phil told the camera, running his finger over the hinge, feeling the switch but not pressing it. “They knew so much about my head, about so many things, but they didn’t know about you. How could they have missed you?”

Phil pushed himself up, sitting on the edge of the couch with his elbows on his knees, studying the silver case. He lifted it to his lips and closed his eyes, wishing it were warm flesh pressed against his mouth. Wishing it smelled of gunpowder and spice and rain. 

“What does it mean, if they were trying to find all my weaknesses, and they didn’t mention you? I thought that… You mean so… I lu… Jesus, Barton… Are you just another pair of eyes for SHIELD? Is this just a way for Fury to keep an eye on me? Did they program my… my _feelings_ for you into me? What is this?”

His face crumpled, and he pressed the butts of his hands into his eyes.

“If you’d seen what I saw, babe...” he said, trailing off into a long, shuddering breath. “If you saw what I was while I was lying there with my… my brain hanging out, on fire. Begging them to just let go of me. Let me just… I couldn’t stand it. It was the only thought I had left -- dying. I was so scared. I was a disgusting, pathetic… thing. Something so… Thank God you didn’t know about that. You… you can’t. Not ever. If you knew what I was… I wasn’t even a man. Just… desperation. And fear. God, Clint. No, please no. You wouldn’t want…

“They broke me, Clint. Fuck, they… I have withstood torture from some of the most disgusting minds in the world. But they broke me. _SHIELD broke me_! Do you understand that? I couldn’t… I didn’t want… And then they, I don’t know, covered it up. In my head, I mean. Put a shiny, Tahiti-shaped band-aid over the mess they made.”

He wrapped both arms across his chest and hunched his shoulders, closing in on himself. 

“You wouldn’t want me, if you knew,” he murmured, voice growing hoarse. “I don’t… I don’t know why you do any… But that. This. I… I don’t want you to know. You _can’t_ ever know.”

Phil rose slowly and walked to the shelves holding his collection, tear-damp t-shirt over his shoulder and Clint Cam clutched in his hand. He mentally identified the history of each object on the first shelf, wondering if he had learned the information, or if it had been programed into his head. Another shelf, and he spent more time pondering where he had gotten each thing. Another shelf, thinking of what the items meant to him, personally. Finally, he was standing in front of the little model red Corvette, knowing that, if he turned it over, he would find the chicken-scratch code Clint had left for him years before. He didn’t turn it over.

“Fuck, I wish I could tell what’s real and what’s staged.” 

He sighed, shook himself, and walked back to his desk, glancing over the papers stacked neatly in the corners. With another sigh, he dropped back into his desk chair, Clint’s shirt still hanging over his shoulder. He leaned his head down on the blotter and cradled the communicator against his shirt, directly over his heart, for several heartbeats. He leaned back in his chair, elbows propped on the armrests, bottom lip pressed to his interlocked fingertips where his steepled hands held the Clint Cam. 

“I’m grateful, you know,” he said, trying for conversational and missing, voice cracked and heart bleeding. “You helped me out when I thought I was only a little broken. Made my body feel alive again. Reconnected me. Stripped me down and pieced me back together.” With your hands and your mouth and... “But I’m so much more broken than we either one knew, than we ever could have guessed. So you can’t… there’s not…”

He trailed off, staring off staring into the middle distance. 

With a heavy sigh, he shook off his reverie and pulled the sweat-stained t-shirt off to finish changing into a fresh suit. Time to see Victoria Hand off of his Bus, and to make certain she took Raina with her.

____

Her wrist felt oddly light, and Skye had been rubbing it off and on ever since AC had taken the tracking bracelet off her in the cargo bay with his soft smile. (She refused to think too closely about that smile, about how it seemed nearly too sweet and tender enough to bruise. Possibly rotten underneath, like an apple starting to go off.)

She might have been flashing her bare wrist around a bit as she and the BrainTwins collapsed in the lounge, because Fitz had been intermittently congratulating her since he’d first noticed it. It gave her an uncomfortable little rush of pleasure, as did the way Simmons had practically adhered herself to Skye’s side. Jemma was clearly coming down from an adrenaline high-- her babbling had increased to gale force speeds and she kept reaching towards Skye then backing off with sudden ducks of her head. The faster she got, the more Fitz’s eyes widened, and he began to dart glances at the more breakable things in the lounge.

Skye met his glance, and jerked her head towards the bunks. Fitz nodded. 

“C’mon, lady, let’s get you to bed,” she said, shifting Jemma into her arms and hoisting her up. “You look like you could use it.” 

“I… yes. Bed. Of course.” Jemma said after a moment’s stock-still confusion. “Please. Take me there.” 

Skye did, pulling off her shoes and tucking her gently under the covers. When she came back out into the lounge, Ward and May were leaning at the bar, slumped over highball glasses. There was a stiffness between them that made Skye want to slip away as quietly as possible, but Ward caught her on her way to the stairs with a soft

“Hey.”

“Hey, yourself,” Skye replied, and then, for lack of anything better to say, “I got Simmons to bed; she looked like she was about to fall apart. Has to be tough, standing up to Agent Hand. Where’s Fitz?”

“Off to bed himself, I think,” Ward said. “Or off to his bunk, anyway. Hey-- Skye?” He stopped her as she began to slip away, and she turned. The smile on his face was less overripe than AC’s, but shared some secret twin origin with it, clearly, because it was twisting her stomach in a familiar way. “I’m glad to see that,” he said, nodding at her wrist. “You deserve it.”

Skye looked down at her wrist, then back up at Ward and past him at Melinda May. It had to be a trick of the light, but she could have sworn that May was completing the uncomfortably-sweet smile triple play. 

Skye nodded and slipped out onto the catwalk as quickly she could manage without appearing to be fleeing entirely. That little twist of regret, she was used to that on smiles, and also the pleased surprise (because c’mon, Skye was pretty damn good, thank you), and the exhaustion, and-- frankly-- the rotten fruit edges. It was the _respect_ that she couldn’t handle at the moment.

She was still too fucking scared, truth to tell. Scared for herself, in retrospect, because _holy fuck Skye, you just impersonated Melinda May and didn’t get yourself killed_. Scared for her team, because: supersoldiers and Centipede. Scared for Himself, because he was not, he was _not_ doing as well as he wanted her to think. (And he hadn’t exactly tried to sell her on the “everything’s fine” party line, either, so….) 

Scared about what might have happened to him, if she’d gotten there a few minutes later.

Blue shadows softened the cargo bay now, dim and silent. Lola was gone-- and Skye panicked briefly, before deciding that May would never have left AC unobserved, and must have decided it was best to let him go. It was merely her own selfish heart that wanted him safely locked away upstairs where she could keep track of him. After everything she went through to get him back, though, Skye didn’t figure that was an unreasonable response.

Speaking of which…. She’d delayed this call too long already, between the aftermath of the rescue, the debriefing, the miniature meltdown, and the little pingbacks she’d just finished with her team.

Skye slipped into the back seat of the SUV and pulled out her phone, squeezing her eyes shut against the wave of memories that hit her. (Coulson climbing into the back seat with her as she hid her hacking under a sea of tumblr tabs, late nights retreating from too many strange people bouncing around in a metal tube too small to contain them all.) 

The phone barely had time to ring before that gruff voice said:

“Hello?”

“Do I need to say the safeword?” Skye asked, gulping down an immediate “sorry” as she processed how very battered his voice sounded. 

“Skye? Oh thank god.” Even over the phone, Skye could tell that Ronin was biting something back, and biting hard. “ _Talk_ to me.” 

Well, so much for holding back the apology flood.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t call earlier, there was so much to do afterwards, and Simmons was just dead-- on her feet, I mean-- and I couldn’t get away and I wanted to wait until Hand and all her flunkies were off our Bus before I called because I didn’t think that would be safe and--”

“Skye!” There was some iron left in that voice after all.

“-- he’s back.”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Knew you’d do it.” In the pause that followed, Skye listened to her own exhalations, slowed them down beat by beat. Ronin started up a little more hesitantly this time. “How is he?”

“He’s… he’s fine. He says.” He was lying through his teeth, Skye was pretty damn sure of that. 

“He is _not_ fine.” 

AC’s-- Coulson’s-- face when she found him on the machine, the sheer sobbing smiling relief in the way he’d said her name, were still burned in memory. She started to answer Ronin, opened her mouth and began a word.

No one had ever said her name the way Coulson had, before, like she was the best thing he’d ever seen.

Her instinct was to gather that up to herself, hide it in her chest and let no one else, ever, know how vulnerable he was in that moment, not even by second-hand report.

“He’s _not_ fine, Skye. Please. I just… _please_.”

Ronin sounded as exhausted and shredded as she felt. And if only for the magical way those state troopers disappeared (and, as she heard in debriefing, the way Agent Hand’s face had gone bright red and she’d started snapping at any agent she could get her hands on, just before Skye’s call had come through), he deserved something.

Maybe not Coulson’s smile, but something.

She gave it to him, taking him along the way with her because she couldn’t figure out how to just summarize it for him. Describing the deserted testing facility, the heat crawling over her, the panic just before Ward and May arrived like fucking knights in black tac suit armor. 

It shocked Skye that he let her do this, when he must have been vibrating with impatience. He even checked in on her-- little snorts of sympathy or surprise, a possibly-involuntary “kickass!”

When she started talking about how she’d found Coulson, writhing and screaming under the machine, he went silent. There was breathing over the line, or at least she thought it was, rough and a little shuddery.

So she didn’t tell him what Coulson had said. Didn’t give up that secret; that, too, was just between them.

“He seemed to be holding up, at least. Got changed into a fresh suit.”

“He would. He’d be in a fresh suit if hell itself were coming up to meet us-- he has, in fact.”

Us?

Later. (If there was a later.)

“And he took my bracelet off! Said it was about time.” Her wrist looked small and pale in the low blue light, like it could snap in half, but it was a beautiful sight.

“It was _past_ time, girly girl. You earned that.” The warmth in his voice, shaky but real, shocked her. 

And nearly stopped what she was going to say next, so that they could end on that good note, on him being happy for her, not worried for AC, who was properly her business now.

But he was owed this last part.

“I asked what they’d done, what he saw, and he said it was all lies. They’d lied to him, they’d tried to mislead him, make him believe things that weren’t true....” Yes, but-- she wasn’t sure what to say after that.

“But?” he prodded.

“But I think it hurt him badly all the same. He’s… he’s gone right now. In Lola. Somewhere-- don’t worry, May knows. I think. She wouldn’t let him go off alone.”

“No, she wouldn’t,” he admitted after a moment, and Skye filed that away too in the Ronin file in her brain. He heaved a sigh. “He needs that now, I think. Some space to just go and not be responsible for you. I wish--”

Oh god, was she never going to get away from people with rotten apples in their voices and faces? Did they teach that in SHIELD school or something? 

Ronin never finished that sentence, because what was there to finish? He just sighed, turned the subject, asked after her politely, how was she handling everything? If he seemed… not distracted, precisely, just flat, she didn’t call him on it. He was making the effort, and he always had.

After he hung up, with a sudden “gotta go” in that iron voice that had gone brittle so quickly, she sat for a long time in the SUV. Not thinking, really, just letting reality swirl around in her head and settle where it would.  
____


	2. Seeds and Fortunes

“You’ve ruined it!”

Kate Bishop stood in the kitchen, staring at Clint with shock. 

“Goddamnit, Clint, I cleaned it! That’s all. I cleaned your damned coffee pot. Now get it _out of my face_. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“It takes years to build up a nice crust like that! That’s what makes the coffee taste good!” Clint cried, with a last shake of the carafe, before he took a step back and squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, after several long breaths, she was still standing there, caught open-mouthed between indignation and worry. Her eyes actually _flashed_ when she was pissed off, which wasn’t something he thought even Nat could do. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, feeling himself start to collapse. “It’s just been a long… it’s been a long day.”

“Hrmph,” she said, crossing her arms and going hip-shot, but he thought she was starting to soften; she did that quickly, especially with him. Half the fun of poking her up into a towering rage was watching her deflate, though it wasn’t perhaps a healthy pastime.

“I know, I know, it’s been long for you, too, Katie-Kate. Can you toss me Lucky’s leash? I’ll get out of your hair for a while.” Maybe a walk would do him good, give him a chance to get some fresh air into his brain. Hell, maybe a jog-- Lucky liked jogs (Lucky did not like jogs, but Lucky liked Clint), just a guy and his best frie--oh. Kate was talking.

“It’s been more than a day, Clint, far more. And I already took Lucky for a walk while you were out skulking around or whatever it was you’ve been doing. Lately you’re barely back before you’re gone again.”

“Well, that’s life in SHIELD, Kate. They finally let me back out with Nat, I’m not gonna say no to that.”

She wasn’t wrong, though; with the mission against Project Centipede, his quick trip to see Phil before that, and several other side projects, Clint had been gone more than home lately, and both his Lucky and his Katie-Kate were suffering.

And apparently, so was his coffee pot.

Himself.

He meant himself.

Kate sighed, evidently seeing the chagrin on his face, and reached out a hand to his. 

“I’m glad you’re getting back out, Clint, just don’t leave me behind, huh?”

“Course not, girly-girl. You’re a Hawkeye now, we gotta stick together.” She was one of the few bright spots of the time before Phil had come back into his life, Kate and her bow and her ridiculous morals and her laughter. He was still confused about how she’d managed to glom onto him, and why the fuck she stuck around but--

“Your thigh is buzzing, Clint.”

And so it was. What was he keeping in-- shit.

Burner phone. Skye. Right.

“Right,” he’d pulled away from Kate and was halfway out the door by the time he’d answered. “I’ll be back soon, okay? Hi? Yes… yes fine: Guyliner. Satisfied now?” he said as he closed the door.  
__

It was windy on the rooftop, and mild. Skye’s voice wasn’t so much so, there was a shaky edge to it, but Clint hadn’t ever heard her without that.

They’d never actually talked before Phil had been captured; they’d always chatted over text or the computer. He still thought of her as words on a screen more than an actual person with an actual voice who was actually babbling about SHIELD Academy (and eh, he’d… seen the place a time or two, but it wasn’t like he was ever SciTech, and yes, yes, Skye you’re very smart, of course I was SHIELD in the past, didn’t I say that last time? Well, near enough anyway.)

“I guess, I just… I just kind of wondered if you heard what went down there,” Skye was saying over the phone, and her voice had gone so quiet he could barely hear it. 

“A bit,” he hedged. Because, yeah, anyone was gonna _not_ hear about a fucking localized ice storm over their finishing school for promising nerds. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

“Kind of. I just….” That hesitance again. “I just… I think I kind of decided SHIELD was family, a little, there? I mean, it felt right. And I, um, I learned a lot about… myself. You know?”

Oh god they’d finally gotten to her. Clint rubbed his fingers over his eyes, suddenly weary, staring down at the overflowing dumpster in the back alley (huh, which likely belonged to him and his building-- better find out where the fuck the trash haulers were). It wasn’t a surprise, if he thought about it right. 

“Yeah, they can get under your skin. Thing about family is, it can get pretty fucking dysfunctional.”

“I suppose,” she said, and Clint was both sure he was missing something and completely unable to give a fuck.

“Mine was anyway,” Clint said, then nearly hit his head against the parapet. _Don’t use your tragic past to manipulate the kiddies_ was like number one on his personal commandments, because god knew he’d always hated it when people tried to do that to him. Oh, we’re all tragic _here_.

Phil’d never done that; Clint still knew next to nothing about Phil’s childhood. He’d always appreciated that about their relationship. Now, he wondered what he’d missed.

“That… sounds bad?” Skye ventured. Clint shrugged, then realized she couldn’t see it over the phone.

“Eh. Got better eventually.” _After they all died,_ he didn’t add. _And let’s not count Barney right now._ “Was this why you called? You sound a little worn?”

“Yeah… just… checking in. I’m okay. And AC’s doing, I think he’s doing better after this.” She was practically chipper, from what he could tell. “We had a nice talk. Well, no, we had a _horrible_ talk, but I think it was good for us both, you know? He mentioned something about moving forward. Anyway, we’re on our way to Lima now.”

“Are you?” he let himself be diverted, but filed away the fact that she was doing it. 

“We are. Going after some kind of fortune-telling duo; AC thinks maybe they have powers? I don’t know, but it sounds super easy, just go in, talk to them, get ‘em to sign on. He says we can have a few extra days in Lima, just to recover. I’ve never been there, I like it-- though, I don’t know. Does that sound _too_ easy?”

“Yes,” said Clint, only half listening. Fortune telling duo? Why the hell would Phil even care? Local units could surely--

“Because I don’t know, maybe he’s actually going after the Clai-- you know what, it doesn’t really matter. Maybe I’ll ask him to let me come with. They sound pretty rad: little stand inside the Mercado Central, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, probably siblings, spookily accurate. AC says telepathy doesn’t exist but--”

Clint let her ramble while he stared into the middle distance, off over the roofs of the other apartments on the block and into the twilight.

“-- shit, I’ve got to go, Ward is--” Skye cut off.

“Bye,” Clint said into the dead phone. Then, he straightened up suddenly. “Wait, one man and one woman? Do they--Skye, damnit!” Far too late for that. 

Even as he was thundering back down the stairs, Clint was cursing. Kate was gonna _kill_ him.  
____

Phil dragged himself up to his office as soon as he’d finished the mission brief. His team was ready for this, and they all needed to get some sleep before touching down in Lima. 

Carefully re-hanging his suit, he pulled out his softest pair of sleep pants and Clint’s t-shirt. He knew he had been wearing it far too much lately, hidden under his suits or wrapped around him while he slept. Alone like this, he did not bother to pretend it was just because the fabric was comfortably worn. At this rate, it was going to fall apart from the daily washings in his sink.

He really should have grabbed a few more out of Clint’s dresser while he was there last time. During that one stolen day when… No. That wasn’t worth thinking on right before bed. Too painful when he was here, without Clint’s warmth. When he couldn’t provide the strength that Clint relied on Phil to have.

He turned his mind back to the mission.

Lima might hold answers, some connection to the Clairvoyant, a clue about where he was getting his information. There were reports of two people, operating under the name “The Fortune Teller,” that rumor held provided information that was always terrifyingly accurate. Intel from SHIELD’s Peruvian counterparts had turned up some _interesting_ buyers, flying in from all over the world, crowding into the tiny booth in the Mercado Central to hear “what the future held” -- that is, what agencies were developing in their research labs, who was making a bid for power in which government. And, in spite of months of observation, no one had been able to provide much background on the duo; their residence was listed as unknown, as was their country of origin. They certainly did not _look_ Peruvian, and local gossip suggested they did not speak much Spanish.

Phil had decided to take point on the reconnaissance portion of the mission. He was tired of sitting in his office, feeling like his skin was about to crawl off. He was tired of pretending everything was fine while holding still. And he hadn’t been to Lima in over a decade. Go into the city, find good things to eat, collect one of the fortune tellers and demand to know where their partner was. Simple enough.

Lima. Phil huffed a quiet laugh. That was where May suggested Phil would go to hide from SHIELD, if he decided to run. 

She was wrong. 

Everyone above a certain level in SHIELD had an escape plan; it was just one of those things. Phil’s had been carefully planned when he was Level 3, with contingency plans for every contingency plan. Later, it became a two-man plan, with Clint providing the means and Phil establishing the method. Eventually it grew into a three-person plan that was guaranteed to work. Clint could never leave without Nat, and Phil would never leave without Clint, and the three of them combined all the necessary skills to vanish for good. And Phil knew he would not even try to leave on his own. If the situation became bad enough for Phil to go, it was too bad to leave them behind. 

That thought stung now, more than Phil ever thought it could. Because this -- this having had his head cut open, having his brain and memories toyed with -- it was almost enough to crush Phil’s faith in SHIELD, enough to make him doubt the system. But Clint and Natasha couldn’t leave, not with the Avengers finally starting to click together. 

Not without Phil being able to tell Clint what happened, and he simply couldn’t. He could not stand for Clint to pity him, look down on him -- not right now. Since his first visit to New York after his death, Phil had been clinging to Clint’s faith in his abilities. 

Phil sighed, shook himself out of his reverie, and began to straighten the papers on his desk. He tried not to look at the binder standing by itself on the corner, leaning against a lamp. The lamp he had kicked off the desk when Clint had… Stop. Not thinking about that right now. He shuffled papers between files, scraped a few pens into a drawer, and checked to make sure his sidearm was secured in its case.

He finally picked up the binder and hid it under another stack without opening it. People were not meant to be able to see photos of their own dead body. Shortly after Fury had sent it, May had come in while he was reading and throwing pens and files and anything that was not tied down around the office. She had demanded to know what he was looking at and had grabbed it out from under his nose. She didn’t understand any more of the coded medical jargon than Phil had, but she had quickly figured out the basic gist. The work on his heart and his lungs was straight-forward enough, but the procedures became incredibly cryptic and complex after that. Simmons could probably explain, but Phil was terrified of her knowing what happened to his mind. Of any of the others knowing. Best it remain between him and May. 

And Fury: the reason behind it all.

Stretching as he finished putting his desk in order, Phil felt the shirt ride up against his ribs. For one blissful moment, it felt like a caress. 

God, how he missed Clint.

He probably should have called him before, but he the mission at the Academy had come up, and then the side trip to Mexico. And, after that, Phil was too tired, too battered to reach out. The death of that boy, Seth Dormer: that was just one more wound for Phil to carry. To have been the one who called it. Had he made the right choice? Was there really no hope?

Maybe he shouldn’t have headed off to Mexico with May. If Phil had only been with the team to provide some guidance to Fitz, if he had been onsite when the whole thing started, perhaps that mess could have been avoided. But he had needed the information from Agent Lumley. The window to find him had been so small, and there was no one else who knew Skye’s history, who knew how hard that small team had fought to save one baby girl.

Thinking of Skye’s face, of the new energy to her, made Phil smile. She, at least, was going to be okay. She had her answer, and she was able to face the pain and keep going. He could learn a lot from her. 

But the two missions had taken a toll on Phil, emotionally and physically. And Clint would have seen right through him, would have instantly realized that something was wrong. There was no way he would have been able to hide the scars he was carrying around from what he had learned in that machine. 

Phil pulled out his bed and smoothed the comforter. Crawling under the covers, he reached in his pillowcase to wrap his hand around a small aluminum case, holding it, but not drawing it out. The tangible reminder of Clint made heat pool low in his gut, but he rolled over, pulling the sheet over his ears, ignoring the spark of desire. The last time he had given into it was during his morning shower just after Clint had snuck out of his bed and off his Bus. Since the morning before Phil’s world collapsed in flames. 

____

 

For the last ten minutes, the fruit and soda vendor had been glaring at Skye, and now all her street vendor friends were getting in the act. From across the little wide spot in the sidewalk where three green-topped stands had congregated, the newspaper vendor was looking up at Skye every other minute. The vendor beyond was squeezing lemons into his lemonade with an almost graphic vehemence while his eyes were fixed on her.

What it was Skye had done to provoke such suspicion, out of the sea of people that were flowing in and out of the Mercado Central, bags in hand, she wasn’t quite sure. It might have been the tablet she was holding in her hands and glancing at every few minutes, or the way she shifted from foot to foot impatiently. 

It was a horrible position for surveillance, but Coulson had insisted that he needed eyes and backup out on the street. Ward had gone in with him-- or rather, had gone in deliberately _not_ with him-- and was lurking in the second level, watching Coulson from the balconies. Ward’s porcupine face proved he liked the distance as little as she did, but AC would have had her back on the Bus in seconds flat, even now, if she’d tried to wrap him in bubble wrap.

She still wanted to, but. Skye was nothing if not used to doing without things she wanted, although several of her teammates might have disagreed. Well-- they might previously have disagreed; perhaps recent actions had finally made it clear to them that most of her supposedly impulsive and self-indulgent moves had logic behind them. When you’d spent your entire life needing to know when stepping out of line would get you hit, versus when it would get you at least an hour of joy, you learned to judge your leaps. You also learned to hide that you knew how to do that. People tended to freak out a bit. AC had never been fooled, she was pretty sure. AC had known how to handle her from the beginning, as easy as if he’d been doing it his entire life.

It had started out scary, and it was scary how quickly it’d gone to comforting. 

Speaking of AC, he was muttering into her comm, counting off the stalls until he reached the one with their target (one of their targets). Ward was replying; no sign of anything suspicious in the area (why would there be). May was skulking around the other end of the block, waiting to be called in if needed. FitzSimmons checked in to say they still weren’t registering any unusual spikes in electrical activity or any of the several other sorts of wavelengths they were monitoring. 

“No strange chatter anywhere on the social networks. Fitz, you’ve tapped into any wireless activity right? Nothing odd?” Skye asked in an undervoice.

The fruit vendor resettled on her little stool with a huff, tracked a policeman who was wandering by, and looked back at Skye with a raised eyebrow.

“Hi,” Skye said in her broadest Tourista, coming over to her. “Look, my dad’s supposed to meet me here, but he’s running late. Do you think I can borrow your stool por favor?” The vendor removed her glare from Skye long enough to stare at the stool, then shifted her glare back upwards. “And maybe I could buy a soda-- um, and an apple? And, some candy?” Smile, and smile, and ignore the glare. (Oh, and mute her comm-- Ward was snapping at her.)

A minute or so later, Skye was settled next to the vendor, perched on a wobbly green stool. She had acquired an apple, a lemonade, and a newspaper (into which she’d folded her tablet) and she was down about three sols for stool rental. Wobbly as the stool was, her feet felt significantly better and she no longer had the feeling that the lemonade guy was just waiting to stick a shiv in her back. The late afternoon sun was casting the entire mini-plaza into shadows, but the sea of humanity passing in and out of the doors hadn’t slowed at all.

Life was just settling back down when she heard AC’s shout over the comms.

“He-- she-- they’re rabbiting. I’m on it.”

“Which is it, sir? He or she? I only saw one person?” Ward asked.

“There _is_ only one person. Follow that-- oof!” 

Oof? Oof was not good. 

“May, we need backup, Coulson’s being attacked by one, no, three hostiles-- no, he’s gone. They’re chasing. I’m going in.”

Shit. Shit shit shit. And here was Skye, completely helpless outside, supposedly coordinating something she couldn’t see worth a damn. Coulson’s and Ward’s markers stood out on the tracking app on her tablet, zigzagging through the stalls inside. She called out coordinates to May as best she could, then had to recalibrate the app as Fitz added two new video feeds and a host of static images to it.

“Damnit, Fitz, keep it steady--” Her hip was buzzing. Why was it buzzing? Before she’d even realized she was doing it, Skye had extracted her phone from her pocket and was staring at Ronin’s text.

_call me now danger_

“Well, no fuck there’s danger,” she snapped under her breath, but muted her comm as she did. 

“What danger?” Ward asked over the line, then said “wait, I’ve lost the mark-- Coulson, do you have--”

“Guyliner Skye listen to me he’s in danger in there,” Ronin said into the phone. He’d picked up halfway through the first ring, and the phone wasn’t even to her ear when she started talking.

“Yes I know, how do _you_?” She hissed. 

“Takes too long to explain. Skye, you’ve got to patch me in here, I can help. You’re gonna need it, there are too many of them for just May, Ward, and Coulson. You’ve got to let me help, I need to-- I can keep him safe.” He was frantic, even tinny as his voice was over the phone, even with all the background noise, she could tell.

“I’m not patching you into anything, I’m not telling you anything unless you tell me how you know an-- are you here? You’re here!”

“Yes. I’m here. Skye, you’re not chasing two fortune tellers, you’re chasing Waarzegster.”

“Bless you,” Skye said automatically. It sounded absurd as it came out.

“I didn’t sneeze. ‘Zegster’s an ex-merc con artist.”

“Then where’s his-- her-- where’s the partner?”

“No partner. ‘Zegster plays both fortune tellers you’re seeing. One person. No partner, just a shitload of hired goons and possibly a couple other flunkies.”

“We can handle them; we handle flunkies all the time, Ronin.”

“Yeah, I know. Long as you’re able to give each other backup. How’s that working out?”

From the shouts of confusion coming down the comm lines, not so well. It didn’t help to direct anyone from out here-- she could see the layout, but the cameras had too many blind spots and the pictures didn’t show recent displays, and oh-- oh, poor Ward. 

“It’s… we’ll do fine.” They would, right? They weren’t going to lose AC again so soon? Please god-- well, please everything, because God was, well anyway-- please not so soon.

“Skye, please.” She could have sworn Ronin was thinking her own thoughts, because he sounded like he was practically begging over the line. “I can't say 'when have I ever let you down,' because I did. Twice. In Austin and when you needed me to help you find Phil. But I _can_ say 'when have I ever betrayed you'? Trust me. I can get Phil back to you safely.”

“You and me, we’re going to talk when we’re done here,” she said, and her voice felt thick despite the quart of lemonade she’d sucked down in the last ten minutes.

“Yes. I can listen in on the frequency if you give it to me. They don’t need to know I’m here at all. You can still talk to me on the phone.”

“Yes.” She said, and gave it to him. There was nothing further after that, and she turned her attention back to trying to make sense of wherever the hell May had gotten herself to, and how many of her attackers were thugs versus local security.

A shout made her look, up, and she turned to see a commotion in the building diagonal from her spot on the street. It was a low tan stucco affair with rotting brown balconies, elaborately carved. As she watched, a figure in black burst out onto the balcony and leapt, feet first, off of it.

He hung in the air for a long moment, the low sun setting fire to the gold bands piping his costume, before disappearing into the crowd below. Skye was standing now, newspaper falling from her hands and onto the pavement. She barely held onto her tablet.

People scattered as he burst out of the street and streaked towards the market. Ronin turned towards her as he passed, just a quick bob of a faceless black mask in her direction and an incongruous little wave, and then he was gone, disappeared into the market.

“Wow,” she said, collecting her jaw from the ground where it seemed to have landed, “that was an actual fucking ninja.”

“¡Sí, sí!” said the fruit vendor, and she started fanning herself vigorously with Skye’s newspaper. “¡Un ninja MAGNÍFICO!”

___

Clint could feel his pulse hammering, fast but steady, under his skin, telling him to “hur-ry, gettohim, hur-ry, gettohim” with every thump. He got momentarily caught up in a crowd rushing to exit through the doors where he was attempting to enter, all chattering about la lucha and los rufianes, and, incongruously, las bragas. What panties had to do with a fight and a bunch of thugs was beyond even Clint’s imagination. He finally managed to fight his way through the mass of panicking humanity and get inside the mercado. 

Clint’s training took over, and he slid into a now deserted booth as another wave of screaming civilians came thundering toward him. He fumbled for the cord to the lights above the countertop, plunging the interior of the small space into greyish shadows. Ninjas need shadow, he told himself dryly.

And, oh, there was the connection between ladies’ underthings and the fight. Poor Ward. Couldn’t worry about him right then, though: not until Clint was sure Phil was okay. 

Phil. Phil was there.

Phil was fighting with three men about twenty feet down from Clint’s hiding place. Phil was on his feet, the only visible damage being a bruise blooming on his jaw where someone had gotten a lucky strike. He was circling slowly, hyper-aware of the three men who surrounded him, clearly waiting for one of them to make the first move. And fuck! was Phil-in-action beautiful. He had little of Natasha’s dramatic flair, and less of Clint’s brute strength, but every movement was tightly controlled, graceful, fluid. Clint hadn’t _forgotten_ what it was like to watch Phil being badass, but memory had tempered it, letting him forget the heat that curled low in his belly from watching Phil’s body stretch, twist. Phil reached for the first man with determination in the set of his jaw and his hand clenched into a rock hard fist. 

Clint studied Phil’s face, looking for signs of the hopelessness that had marked his expression during their last communication, but all he saw was concentration and deadly focus. It reassured him that Phil was okay, hadn’t lost a step. His defense was more deadly than most anyone’s offense, and he wasn’t in any immediate, life-threatening danger. Clint forced himself to look away and assess the rest of the scene. 

‘Zegster stood a few feet away, shouting at the hired help in Dutch, easily recognizable in spite of the over-the-top Fortune Teller robe. ‘E looked exactly as Clint remembered. Same thin, pale, androgynous face with heavy-lidded brown eyes under chin-length black hair, thin lips, and small, pointed chin; nothing to determine the gender ‘e had been born with, nothing to prevent ‘em from putting on the two-person act. Still quite attractive, in spite of the decade and a half that had passed since they’d last met. Also, judging from the Dutch that spilled from Zeg’s mouth, ‘e still used plural pronouns to talk about ‘mself. Pity Clint didn’t remember much more of the language than pronouns.

From the looks on the hired helps’ faces, they didn’t understand the shouted directions any more than Clint did, and quite probably understood a lot less. Ward, who had clearly rappelled down from the second level railing on the rope hanging above him, was trying to claw his way out of the shop of women’s clothing he had been kicked into. ‘Zegster saw the movement and took off, darting past Clint’s hiding place. Before he could make a move, Phil launched himself toward the edge of a nearby meat stall. He leaped lightly off the edge of the counter and spun, his foot connecting hard with one man’s jaw on the way down. And then Phil was running past Clint’s hiding place, and Ward was on the two remaining thugs.

Clint didn’t hesitate, sliding back the way he had come, following Phil’s well-suited lead, out through the north entrance to the Mercado and into the late afternoon Peruvian sun.

___

Phil reached under his jacket, wrapping his hand around the butt of his sidearm in its accustomed spot on his hip, but decided against drawing it, hoping to avoid panicking the late-afternoon shoppers. He thought back, trying to decide where everything had gone sideways. It had seemed like such a simple op, something restful after the emotional trauma of their last two outings. A bit of a vacation, even.

The plan worked perfectly for the first several hours, and then two things happened at once. First, Phil had been made just as he had worked out that both Fortune Tellers were one and the same. He was still uncertain as to _how_ he had been made, but he’d been in the intelligence and covert ops world long enough that it was no longer a shock when it happened. Sometimes other spies recognized him from past operations. Sometimes they recognized him from SHIELD dossiers. Maybe he should contemplate creating his own cross-dressing persona for field work.

Secondly, the Fortune Teller started to rabbit and sent out hired muscle to try to take Phil down while he… she… they did. He was approaching the silk-draped front of the booth when four men leaped on him out of neighboring stalls. One of them managed to tackle him, and another kicked him in the jaw while he was down. Phil had shouted for backup and watched Ward rappel over the edge of the upper railing, swinging into the fight, only to be thrown clear, smashing into a nearby display wall. Phil had twisted free as the Fortune Teller had swung around and began shouting orders in Dutch, but the thugs had caught up to him again, and he was drawn back into hand-to-hand combat.

That was when the crowd began to riot, screaming and running, most of the shopkeepers and shoppers alike heading for the exits and upper levels, trying to get out of the way. Phil used the distraction to find a more defensible location. A quick glance at Ward showed him to be mostly uninjured, although rather tangled in the countless pairs of yellow panties that had festooned the wall and were now decorating his head, while the woman who owned the booth berated him in Spanish and threw purses at him. Poor Ward.

A brief skirmish with the hired muscle later, and Phil got clear just in time to see the Fortune Teller bolt.

Phil jolted out of his reverie as he tripped over a display of spices laid out on the sidewalk in front of a young man. Cinnamon and cloves assaulted Phil’s nose. 

“¡Perdóneme!” he said, waving his hand vaguely as he stumbled a few steps and then sneezed. “Sorry!”

The slender form of the Fortune Teller dodged through the mass of people crowding the sidewalks with their chatter and haggling, people making way for the brilliant scarlet robe. His mark was starting to get a decent lead as people moved aside for the long red robe and stony expression. Phil stepped off the curb behind a strange bicycle/wagon hybrid that was being pedaled down the street with a picked-over load of pineapples. The slow pace of the human-powered machine made a gap in the bumper to bumper traffic, letting Phil get clear of the crowd.

A gunshot split through the chatter of the market noise, and a bullet split through a pineapple. For a given level of split: the pineapple exploded. Shoppers began screaming, pushing against each other as they tried to determine where the shot had come from. The man peddling at the back of the wagon fainted, and Phil absently snagged him by the back of his shirt. There was a shriek from the man steering the makeshift vehicle as he joined the fleeing crowd. 

“I’m taking fire,” Phil said calmly into his comm. He crouched by the wagon, drawing his gun. “Have one unconscious civilian, uninjured but apparently much alarmed by exploding pineapples.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Jemma’s voice came across the commline timidly. “Did you say… ‘explo..”

Phil’s grunted obscenity cut her off as a second bullet narrowly missed his head. The bullet buried itself in the sidewalk and sprayed his pant leg with shards of cement and dust. He hefted the limp form of the pedaling pineapple peddler to drag him to safety. Sheltering inside a now-abandoned storefront, Phil dropped his human burden behind the counter. He moved back to the open door, pressing himself against a rack of t-shirts with poorly screened, badly misspelled tourist propaganda for cover.

He waited there a few long moments, holding his breath. No more shots were forthcoming, so he ducked into the street, turning to follow the direction he’d last seen the Fortune Teller heading.

“Resuming pursuit,” he reported. “May have lost suspect. Also, I think I’m being tailed.”

A group of people came out of a shop he had recently passed. Phil recognized the long, slender form in a red robe in the center of the small group behind him. 

“Have found the suspect,” Phil said. “Unfortunately, the suspect also found me and some backup.”

Sucking in a deep breath, Phil swung right and took off through the shoppers on the next street, bouncing off of bodies and stepping on feet, not wasting his breath on apologies.  
___

Clint was running along through the crowds who all turned and smiled at “El Ninja” when he heard the gunshot ahead. From the direction Phil had gone. A gunshot, near Phil. Clint started shoving through the crowd as the flow of foot traffic shifted, and everyone in front of him was coming at him, blocking his way to Phil. _Gettohim hur-ry!_

With a desperate whine, Clint looked frantically around for access to a roof. Had to get out of the crowd. _Gettohim hur-ry_! Several long bolts of fabric leaning against a nearby wall gave him the solution, and he had scrambled up the tubes before they could begin to slide. He stood on the low roof for a moment, scanning the crowd, hunting for Phil, and then another gunshot drew his eyes to his own level, to where a man was standing on the rooftop with a rifle aimed down at the street, down at _ohgodPhil_!

The knife was flying out of Clint’s fingertips before Clint even realized he’d drawn it from the sheath at the back of his neck. The man crumpled before his finger could tighten on the trigger a third time. Clint ran, heading along the roofs for the store he’d seen Phil duck into, pausing only a second to retrieve his knife from the gunman’s ear and wipe it on the dead man’s shirt before sliding it back in its hidden sheath. And then Phil was back in the street below him, face composed, but with those tiny lines deepening around his eyes and mouth that only Clint could see from this distance, the lines that meant he was worried. 

Clint watched Phil turn and run, dodging around a corner. 

Waarzegster went by with nearly a dozen men on hand: their usual sort of hired help, all brawn and no brain. Clint let them get far enough ahead of him that he could keep them all in sight, and, when a group broke off to the south and one to the north, he called Skye.

“Guyliner. There are two groups trying to outflank Himself,” he said. “Send Ward down to Miró Quesada and May up Huallaga to cut them off. I’ve got the rest.” And he hung up without waiting for a reply. Skye was smart; she could figure out how to play it to the team.

The sun was dropping lower toward the horizon, leaving shadows pooling thickly at the feet of the buildings and the sky blazing red above. Clint jumped to the ground, rolled, and came up running after his prey with the light footsteps and easy balance of a tightrope artist. 

Two men were lagging behind, and Clint caught them both by the collar, slamming their skulls together. He spared one moment to wish he could tie them, but shrugged and kept running after making a mental note to add a pocketful of zip-ties to Ronin’s equipment. 

“Four to go,” Clint growled to himself, “and then it’s your turn, ‘Zeg.” 

Clint leaped, twisted, and used the heavily carved side of one of Lima’s famous balconies to pull himself back to roof level.

The next goon found himself on the ground as Clint dropped from above, twisting his body as his thighs closed around the man’s head in a fair imitation of the Black Widow’s famous maneuver. He neatly thumped the man’s head against the sidewalk and kicked him out of the way.

“Thanks, Nat,” Clint whispered as he drew a katana and sped after the final three. 

The group heard him coming, and, at a signal from Zeg, three of them turned to face him, guns drawn. 

“I _hate_ bringing a knife to a gunfight,” Clint said to himself as he whirled toward the first man without hesitation. His instant movement saved him from the shot aimed his way, and he dodged in close enough to flick his blade through the man’s belt. When the ruffian looked down at his now-drooping pants, Clint punched him in the face, fist made harder by his grip on the hilt. The man dropped, out cold. Clint dove toward the feet of the next, tangling their ankles together and then skewering the man’s thigh as he rolled to his feet and flipped out of the way of the expected gunshot. The man squealed and dropped his gun, grabbing at his bleeding leg. Clint flicked the gun away with a flash of his katana.

Clint rolled to his feet, sword held with the firm grip and soft wrist drilled into his body by the Swordsman. He grinned behind his mask.

“Wanna try me?” he purred to the last man, cocking his head and weaving the blade gently as he slid his second katana out of its sheath. 

The man let out a strangled whine and ran down the street, back the way they had come. Clint snorted at his retreating form, before turning to clinically kick the bleeding man in the skull, leaving him unconscious on the pavement.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Clint told the limp form. “Can’t have you following me, though. Now where the _hell_ did Phil get off to?”

Clint collected the fear and panic inside, forcing himself into the deep calm of a trained sniper. He needed to use his emotions, not be ruled by them, if he was going to save Phil. He looked around the corner at the next intersection, imagining how Agent Coulson would analyze the terrain. This street had a mix of offices and very old buildings, churches and official-looking places. There were lights coming on in upstairs rooms and offices, as well as in the ground level windows. Streetlights were coming on, and Ronin was rapidly losing shadows to hide himself in, and then, as if he were listening to Phil’s voice in his ear, Clint knew what had happened. 

Running across the intersection, Clint ran along a long brick wall with doors at regular intervals. He made his way toward one door that was open a few inches with no lights showing on the other side. He pressed it a fraction wider, drew one katana, and plunged into the darkness and the hint of cinnamon and cloves on the other side.

___

Phil tried to keep his breathing quiet, but it was hard when he was winded enough to puff. His comm had malfunctioned shortly after he had begun running for his life, leaving him with a connection only to Skye. He had been relieved when he heard the sounds of the skirmish behind him, knowing that at least she had managed to relay enough of his steadily muttered directives to send him some backup. From the grisly sounds of bodies hitting the ground, Phil figured she had sent him May.

It seemed a bit ironic that he now found himself in the chapel of a convent. Of all the places to end up, suit in disarray, hair rumpled, out of breath and sweating. 

“I don’t sweat; I glisten,” he mocked himself in his head. Oh to be running on the treadmill on the Bus instead of through the late afternoon heat of Lima. 

He still did not know if he had been followed, or if May had taken out all of his pursuers. Cringing as “glisten” trickled down his back, sticking his undershirt to his skin, Phil cupped a hand over his face to muffle his uneven breaths. He almost wished for a bit of the ice storm they had dealt with at the Academy so recently; the foot-wide hailstones would cool things down, at least.

Drawing his gun, Phil edged through another door into a dimly lit narthex. There were soft voices murmuring nearby, and Phil spotted two nuns sitting on a pew near the front, heads bowed in prayer. He allowed himself one brief, wild moment thinking of rushing toward them, screaming “Sanctuary!” but let the urge die. Even his disbelieving self thought it was probably very wrong to endanger nuns.

He stuffed the hand that held his gun in his jacket pocket and hurried past the nave and out a small door opposite. A few wrong turns that led to empty offices and small prayer rooms later, and Phil pushed his way out into a small, carefully tended flower garden.

It was darker here in the courtyard than it had been on the street, but he could not tell if it was because it was later or if it was only because of the walls blocking the light. Phil could hear a fountain splashing somewhere in front of him, and he picked his way along the curving path toward it, hoping the noise of the water would cover any inadvertent sounds he might make when he called Skye to tell her where to send May to collect him. 

“You should stop moving now, Agent Coulson,” a clear voice called out from behind him. “We need something from you before we kill you.”

“The Fortune Teller, I presume.” Phil dropped his gun and held his hands up. He turned slowly, but could only just make out the slim shadow under the overhanging upper walkway. “I can’t imagine what I would have that you don’t know.”

“Just this,” the Fortune Teller said. “Why have you and your team come after us? We deal only in information now. We have not done anything worth sending an assassin after us in… at least twelve years. Why now, and why here?”

“May I have your name?” Phil asked. He noted the sounds of someone trying to creep up on him from behind, and tried to ignore the itching sensation just below his left shoulder blade. He _really hated_ knowing there was someone behind him that he couldn’t watch. “And how you are associated with the Clairvoyant?”

“You don’t know who we are?” the mild voice from the shadow sounded surprised and a bit put-out. Phil scrolled through his mental file and placed the accent as Dutch. “As for… that one… we are no more associated there than we are with your… organization. You _are_ with SHIELD, yes?” 

A shape, darker than the rest of the shadows, broke free, and Phil watched the tall, slender form glide toward him, the last red of the sunset-blushed sky glinting off the barrel of a gun and turning the red robes to blood. 

“We don’t like SHIELD,” the Fortune Teller said. “You wish information, but you will not pay us for it like any decent people would do. You demand it, as if information was as cheap as that suit you wear.”

Another shadow - no, a man dressed all in black - dropped over the side of the upper walkway. 

“ _Never_ insult the suit,” said a very familiar voice. 

There was a gurgle from the Fortune Teller, and Phil spun, launching himself at the man who was now trying to quietly sneak off under cover of darkness. Phil looped an arm around the man’s neck, pulling hard enough to cut off oxygen, and counted under his breath until the man went still and loose in his grip. 

Phil dropped him, and spun, whipping out his flashlight. The low angle of the beam lit a pair of booted feet planted firmly on the brick path, and the edge of the Fortune Teller’s gaudy red robe dangling a bit above the ground. There was something that lit a fire in Phil’s gut about the set of the ankles in the unfamiliar boots.

“Not dead, sir,” Clint said cheerfully. “Just incapacitated for a little bit. Learned that one from you.” 

Phil could _feel_ how wild-around-the-eyes he was when the Fortune Teller slid limply from Clint’s stranglehold to the ground. He tried to school his expression, knowing Clint could see him quite clearly even in this dim light. This… this was not something he could process. Clint. Here. In Lima. Saving Phil. 

He raised the flashlight to Clint’s face. Scratch that: Ronin’s mask.

The black fabric billowed with Clint’s heaving breaths, slapping against his face just enough to show the line of his profile before panting away, ballooning enough to make him look inhuman. The gold binding of the costume outlined Clint’s broad shoulders, but the gloves made his hands look oddly delicate when compared to the elaborate armor that twisted up his wrists. 

“Could you get that out of my face, please, sir?” Clint asked, blocking his eyes with a hastily raised arm. “Kinda blind here.”

Phil lowered the flashlight and raised his finger to activate his in-ear.

“Skye,” he said, “I have the Fortune Teller in custody and, er, unconscious.”

“There are a few outside, back the way you came from, too” Clint said quietly. “Not running very quickly, but still breathing.”

“I need backup and containment, following my path from the market to here. There are some others to be taken into custody between there and here,” Phil reported. “I’m… going off-comms for a bit.”

He yanked the comm out of his ear and thumbed the switch to deactivate it before dropping it into his jacket pocket.

“Aww, Phil,” Clint breathed, stepping on the Fortune Teller as he moved toward Phil, arms reaching out. “Fuck, babe. It’s you. Are you okay? Doing any better since...”

Phil let himself be collected in Clint’s embrace, but he began to tense as he found himself trapped against the solid wall that was Clint’s chest.

“God, babe,” Clint murmured, voice barely muffled by the mask. “Been so worried about you. Fucking desperate to see you. Been needing you.”

Phil’s vision was full of black as his face was crushed against the thick fabric over Clint’s neck, locked in the circle of Clint’s arms made unfamiliar by the different armor, by the fabric covering skin that Phil had always been able to touch, to smell, to taste, to ground himself against. Clint’s arms wriggled against Phil’s back and there were two thumps as his gloves hit the ground, and then Clint’s fingers were exploring the back of Phil’s jacket, the sides of his neck, the ridge of his cheekbone, and then sliding through his hair. Phil’s scalp tingled with the sudden shock of nails being dragged over his head, and he panicked.

“No, Cl… Ronin,” Phil said, shoving himself free. “Not… no. Just don’t… don’t do that.”

Clint reached up to pull the mask off, his worried eyes and handsome features appearing from behind the blankness of the black mask. 

“Babe?” he said hesitantly, familiar mouth shaping a familiar word. “Phil, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I just…” Phil trailed off, helplessly aware that he did not know what to say next. “You’re… why are you here? Dressed like that?”

“Hardly my most questionable costume choice,” Clint answered with a crooked smirk, and Phil snorted in reply. 

“Hawkeye can’t know about you,” Clint continued. He bit his lip and leaned down to collect his gloves, tucking them behind the sash around his waist. “So Hawkeye had to stay behind in New York. But Ronin doesn’t answer to anyone, so I figured he could just hop on down and lend a hand.”

“But why _here_ , Clint?” Phil asked. He reached out and touched one finger to the center of Clint’s full bottom lip. He watched Clint’s eyelids droop, half-covering the sparkle of his irises. 

“I heard your team was going after the Fortune Teller, and… I’ve had some dealings with ‘em,” Clint told him. “Back in my merc days.” He nodded back toward the limp form. “Waarzegster. Means the Fortune Teller in Dutch. Another merc. Always liked to play the two-person schtick. He… She… They were… They always had hired muscle on site. As I guess you figured out. Apparently they found there was more money in information than in knifing people in dark alleys, so they set up down here with the two Fortune Teller front. Let the buyers come to them posing as clients looking to hear what Fate has for them, or some bullshit.”

“Anyway,” Clint said, shrugging, “long story slightly less long, I knew they were bad news, and I didn’t want your team going up against them without backup. So here I am.”

“Here you are,” Phil said slowly. His tongue felt thick in his mouth, making speech difficult. “Just… show up on a top-secret mission to… To what, Clint?”

“To keep you safe, Phil,” Clint said, a flash of confusion crossing his face. “I mean, I had intel you didn’t, and you… Just to keep you safe like I couldn’t with that Centipede debacle. Couldn’t with… before New York.”

Phil felt himself cringe. Tahiti was...

“I don’t need a babysitter, Clint,” he snapped.

And Clint’s arms were around him again.

“No, babe,” he breathed into Phil’s hair. “Never that. God, you’re… you’re amazing, boss. You’re perfect. I just… You needed the intel.”

“And rather than just calling,” Phil answered, his own arms coming up to lock around Clint’s waist, “you just decided to show up.” Clint felt strange in armor other than the flexible, skintight layer of his tac suit. Too bulky. Too hard. No accessible skin.

“You told me to wait for you to call. And then you didn’t call,” Clint said, lifting Phil’s chin with one finger. “And maybe I just needed to see you. Make sure you were okay. Make sure you…”

Phil muffled the rest of the sentence with his mouth. 

There was no grace to the kiss, teeth clicking together, Phil’s lip getting caught in the sharpness and beginning to bleed. There was no softness in Clint’s mouth, either, as it dominated, devoured. His hands were running firmly along Phil’s sides, down his arms to the elbow, up and over Phil’s shoulders, cataloguing. Phil caught Clint’s tongue with his own and then bit hard on Clint’s bottom lip. The exploratory touch from Clint was too much like an exam, looking for the flaws, looking for the dead places. 

Phil shoved himself away hard, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth.

“No time for this, Clint,” he snapped. “May and Ward likely are on their way, and you need to be gone before they get here. Ronin does not need to be involved in this mess, and Agent Barton needs to be well away from Ronin.”

Clint was licking his bottom lip, eyes wide and bright. Phil shuddered, surprised by how wrong kissing Clint suddenly felt. There was no comfort in Clint’s chest against his own, no stirring of lust, just… fear. What if Clint found the seams where Phil’d been put back together? Would they crack if pressed too hard?

“This is… not what I want right now, Clint,” Phil said, and he saw Clint flinch, eyebrows drawing together and mouth twisting. “You really need to get out of here.”

“Just… are you okay, babe?” Clint asked. He reached toward Phil’s face, stopping short and dropping his hand. “You were pretty beat up when I saw you last.”

“I’m fine, Clint,” Phil said tightly. He stepped back, out of reach. “Getting over it. Just go. Before anyone finds you. I’ll be in touch later tonight. _Go_.”

“Okay,” Clint said, face suddenly going from hopeful to completely blank. “If that’s what you… I… As you wish. You’ll call me on the Cam when you… Bye, Phil.”

He drew the mask over his face and slid gracefully across the garden, leaping to catch the edge of the upper walkway and climbing silently up the building and away over the edge of the roof. Phil stood watching the space where Clint had disappeared, glad he was gone and desperate to call him back in equal measure. He wasn’t sure where they had stopped functioning together, but at least he now knew:

Phil was too broken, too needy, had to be rescued, for fuck’s sake. Clint couldn’t want him like this.

He scooped Waarzegster over his shoulder and started making his way out of the convent, waiting until he was on the street to reestablish contact with Skye and start directing the cleanup.  
____

Skye had no idea what chicha morada was, but the sign said it was 1.5 sols, and she happened to have just that leftover from her stool-buying spree earlier. So when she saw the dark-coated form appear in a gap in the crowd on the far end of the block, she stood, waited for him to catch sight of her, walked into the little cafe with the yellow walls, and pointed at the sign.

It was nearly full dark. Over the comms, Ward and May were talking, still arguing with authorities. Skye’d tapped into their emergency frequencies long ago, and Fitz’s text-to-speech and Spanish-to-English translators were ensuring they rolled across her screen slowly enough to monitor, several fat streams of scrolling text. She could-- and sometimes did-- swipe at any one of them and send it into the ear of whoever needed to hear it.

Coulson had called in a while back, saying he had ‘Zegster and needed backup and containment. Ward had run point for that, leaving Coulson free to handle the officers and increasingly highly-ranked officials who had descended on the street outside the convent. His comm was off; whatever he was saying he didn’t want broadcast.

A husk of corn and a lonely pineapple rind floated in the chicha morada, which was a violent purple. Skye stared down at it, poking with her straw.

“It’s good, you know. A little syrupy sometimes, but good. It’s not going to kill you to take a sip.”

“You try it first,” Skye said, pushing it across the split formica booth at the man who had just sat down across from her.

“Seriously?” Ronin asked, and raised the… raised… raised his eyebrows although it was _really_ impressive that Skye could tell that under the featureless black mask. 

“I take it this means you’re keeping the ninja hood on, huh?”

“This totally means I’m keeping the ninja hood on; good to meet you in person, Skye.”

Yeah, in _person_ : this huge fantastical figure crammed into a booth in a hole-in-the-wall Peruvian diner, poking at her little plastic cup of juice. A big hulking shadow with big hulking shoulders behind a fucking faceless black mask, an _actualfacts ninja_ , which had never been on her list.

She told him that, since there didn’t seem to be any harm in the admission. Ronin tilted his head back and laughed, holding his gloved hands up to his masked face to bury the… what? tears of laughter? embarrassment? (Surely not-- if you were gonna get embarrassed by shit like that you wouldn’t be wearing ninja gear in public.) It went on a bit too long, and collapsed into a weak chuckle as he fell forward onto his elbows, slumping into the table.

“What _was_ on the list, then?”

“Well, first I thought you were some kind of older potbellied coder guy, but” she indicated his trim waist with a flap of her hand. He shrugged and tilted his head in encouragement.

“Then in Wichita for a bit I thought you were this middle-aged woman with racist cat asses on her boobs. And then I thought you were Pirate Danny, except he turned out to be a sculptor.”

“You-- what? Who?” Amusement warmed his voice, gave it a little burr, and he leaned forward. Holy shit, a guy without a face should never be that fucking expressive. It wasn’t fair.

“In Wichita, when the team was tracing that damn tracker you told me not to track.”

“But you tracked anyway.” She bristled.

“You knew I would.”

“Maybe. Not sorry you did, at any rate. Worked out well for me.” He hunched down a little more, a wriggle of satisfaction like a cat’s.

“Worked out well _how_?”

“Mmm. Pirate Danny?”

“Big blonde guy, yellow kerchief, ancient microbus, purple phone he swore wasn’t his? Ringing any bells?”

“Closer, closer… amusingly close, really. Naw, not me. I was long gone by then.”

“How did you even? Just threw all your tech away?”

“Just threw all my tech away.”

“Fine, next question: what the hell were you _doing_ there?”

“None of your business. No, seriously, Skye--” he interrupted her open mouth with a raised hand.  
“I have my own business outside of watching Coulson’s ass. Sometimes I even actually do it.”

“Was this ‘Zegster dude part of your business?”

“Waarzegster’s not a dude. Well, depending on when-- and how nicely-- you ask. 'Zegster kind of chooses for the day based on a whim, I think. No, I told you before, ‘Zegster’s ex-merc, I knew ‘em way back in the day. Not a target for a milk run-- ‘Zeg and I used to be on good terms, but it’s been years, and I never did trust ‘em. Good thing for you guys I don’t.”

“Years ago? Like back at SHIELD?” 

She took a sip of her insanely purple drink. It… really was good. Unexpectedly spicy through the sweet.

“Cute, you’re very cute, Skye.” Was he laughing at her? Goddamn him, he might be. Hard to tell under that fabric, but she thought those were little sniggers.

“But you _are_ SHIELD, or you were.” She leaned forward. “I’m not wrong about that. You’re SHIELD too, and you knew AC, and now you’re following him around like some kind of, I don’t know,” his head cocked forward, “lost puppy or something.”

His shoulders were heaving now, and his laughter had turned into helpless little eeps. 

“You’re very smart. Can’t keep anything from you.”

Except he _was_ keeping something from her. Skye narrowed her eyes and sipped her syrupy purply drink again, watching the huge ninja across from her collapse in what, in anyone else, she would have called semi-hysterical giggles.

“And what about me?” she said finally, because she was pissed, and because this was the strategic moment.

“What _about_ you?” he asked, sobering.

“Was I just a means to an end?” Lightly as she said it, his head tilt said he caught the hesitation in her.

“Yes and no.” 

That was in no way the complete explanation he seemed to think it was, so she waited, sucking gently at her straw from time to time, hands white around the cup. Finally, he shrugged.

“Yeah, all right; I owe you that. No, I didn’t start poking around the Tide because of him, and I didn’t talk to you at first because of him, either. But, um, yeah, I kinda pushed you towards SHIELD because of him. I, ah, someone needed to keep an eye on him.”

“Oh.”

“‘Oh?’” 

_Yeah, ‘oh,’ you overgrown fucking child following daddy around, playing dress-up ninja_ , Skye did not say. She also didn’t feel a prickling at the edges of her eyes. Not at all. 

“You were hoping for something more.” Shrug and look innocent, tuck the hurt away, and-- his gloved hand pulled hers off the drink and held it. The cloth was rough and dry and warm. “Skye, not sure what it was, but-- tell me?”

No, uh-uh. Not gonna do it. If he hadn’t guessed that she’d thought-- just for a few brief amazing moments-- that she’d found one of the SHIELD members who’d given everything up to protect her, she wasn’t going to give it away. She pulled her hand back.

“You came into the Tide trying to, what, mess them up? Mess SHIELD up? Help them? I don’t know anything about you, Ronin, what the hell do you want me to think? I’ve got all kinds of paranoid fantasies here where you’re going to turn me into SHIELD any time now, or try and blackmail me.”

“For _what_? Against who? Skye,” he reached after her, more to maintain contact than detain her. “All I am right now is a guy that wants someone watching Coulson’s back.”

“ _Why?_ ”

“Because he needs it and I? I… can’t, right now, I guess. Not as well as I need to. He always forgets, Skye. He always forgets to watch his own back. Can you remember that for me, please? For him?”

“Yeah? Yeah, I don’t need you to tell me to do that--I do it anyway. What the hell? You think you need to tell me that? He’s… we’re…” oh god, no, no choking up, please, “family.” She got it out, through a whisper.

He turned away, though it wasn’t like she could see his fucking face or anything.

Oh, yeah, right: he had a family problem. Well fuck him.

“Good for you,” he said, and she blinked. “And good for him.”

“Did… you used to, um? Were you on a team with him or something?”

“Yeah, or something. We, ah, I needed a second chance,” he looked back at her, “and he gave it to me. Like he did with you. So I’m glad for you. He’s the best at what he does. He’s… always been the best. You couldn’t be in safer hands. Even now.”

Something in his stillness, or maybe something in the catch in his throat, made her look up at him.

“Before today, had you seen him recently?”

A snort.

“Define ‘recently.’” 

“Well, since he died.”

“Yes.”

“Just before the last mission. You were on the Bus.”

“Yes. I asked him to be careful, fat lot of good that did.” 

Which meant they still had a level of familiarity, because AC wasn’t going to just let some random face from his past onto the Bus. It also probably meant that he was still SHIELD, unless… wait….

“Wichita.” It all fit. “ _You_ were his contact in Wichita!”

He nodded.

“You… jerk! You sent us most of the way to Oklahoma on a fucking wild goose chase while you did, what? Catch up on old times? Laugh at us? Fuck-- Ronin.” The purply mess was sitting badly in her stomach all of a sudden; too sweet, too thick, cloying aftertaste. “Did he know all this time? About me?”

 _AC would never do that_ tumbled over in her mind, followed closely by _never assume he doesn’t know_.

“No! Swear to god, Skye, I’ve done everything I can to keep your name out of it. Phil’s gonna kill me, but I have.”

 _Phil_. Huh. _Himself._ Crap. _I needed a second chance and he gave it to me. Like with you._ She thought maybe she was going to vomit. 

“That… doesn’t make me feel better. That should make me feel better, right?”

“Not really.”

She looked down to nod her acknowledgement of the horrible amount of understanding in his voice, and when she looked up, he was gone. The shop was nearly empty around her, the grinding of drinks mixers filling in the foreground and the noise of the city, settling in for night, in the background.

“Skye?”

She hadn’t noticed Ward come up, looming above her, tall, dark-clad, looking so very young and vulnerable in the twilight.

“Yeah?”

“It’s all wrapped up. Time to go home.”

_____


	3. No More Lies

Headlights dimmed in the distance, running down the tarmac-- a lone SUV. The cargo bay of the Bus was still open, empty and yawning into the night air, Lola lurid as a tongue on its lip. It would be so easy to slip inside, to wait until it closed, slip up the sides of the hangar to the second story, even into the inner workings of the plane, between the outer hull and inner, climbing ever upwards to emerge in front of Phil’s door.

Memory and imagination painted the scene from there; turn down the bed, strip slowly in the soft circulation of the canned air, sit bare-assed between the pillows, waiting. Foreknowledge set it differently; Phil waiting for him, watching, eyes dark in the dim light of the room, quiet behind his desk. Whatever he was thinking lost behind folded hands and folded lips.

Anxiety, though, was winning out. Anxiety was why Clint was already in the cargo bay when the motors started to whirr and the doors closed, sealing him inside. He looked up at the light visible through the balcony door, and gulped. 

Clint ended curled up in Lola’s front seat, trying to think.

Better to wait until he was damn sure no one was left on the plane, anyway, or at least that they had all gone to bed.

Skye’d been wrong, or he’d been wrong to trust her.

Phil was _not_ doing better. He was definitely not holding up, and he was definitely hiding something.

From Clint.

Clint was familiar by now, god he was, with the particular set of Phil’s voice when he was Agent Coulson, and Agent Barton had stepped over the line. Since Agent Barton had very little concept of respecting lines and Clint less, this happened on a fairly frequent basis. (He knew where they _were_ fuck yeah. He just didn’t always particularly care-- a line wasn’t a line if you didn’t defend it, and how the hell was Clint gonna know if you’d defend it if he didn’t step?)

This hadn’t been Agent Coulson telling Agent Barton where he got off.

It hadn’t even been Phil, or Boss, venting frustration-- perfectly normal we’re-both-tired-and-you’re-an-asshole frustration.

It had been Phil. Scared to death of Clint.

It was a fucking desecration.

Not that Phil was scared-- Clint’d handled Phil scared _shitless_ not that long ago, running into Clint’s corner to hide and get fucked back into some semblance of the badass he was at heart-- that Phil was scared _of him_. Because it was always, always supposed to be the other way around. One of these fine days, Phil was going to fuck off and leave him to his lonesome, he’d always known that. One of these days he was going to step foot over the line irretrievably, because that was pretty much what Clint Barton did.

So there was no reason to be fucking scared of him, to stiffen in his arms, unless whatever Phil was hiding from him had… something to do with him? 

Okay, that’d make sense. Fucked if Clint knew what it could be, frankly, beyond the thing with Skye, and the thing with Skye, well, Phil would have just yelled at him about that. Not-- cringed.

Except-- if Phil knew he was hiding something, but not what, maybe… maybe….

Phil had figured out what had happened to him. And it wasn’t even worth betting on that SHIELD had been up to some spooky shit-- Clint could have (did, in fact) tell him that ages ago.

Which might have suggested, to a newly paranoid and traumatized mind, a mind that didn’t know Clint’s secret, that Clint himself might know more than he’d been letting on.

Which, you know, would make sense in a horrible sort of way.

Except for the fact that Phil fucking Coulson, the Boss himself, would never believe that of Clint. 

So it had to be something else, right?

Well, the logical way to find out would be to march up there and tell him all about Skye, and let the chips fall where they might. Get that cloud out from over her head once and for all, and from his and all of it.

It could go down in flames horribly, yeah, but it could also be the only way to get them back on even footing.

Secret for secret. Let it all out and get back to holding each other.

Holy shit, was he-- trained practically from fucking birth to hide shit and perfected in the gossip mills of SHIELD itself-- actually suggesting radical honesty as a course of action?

Well, it had a certain Hawkeye touch, that was for certain.

Only… why couldn’t he move?

_Because it’s a shit-stupid idea, you idiot._

The buzzing of the phone came to him dimly, after a while, a warming vibration against his thigh.

Clint pulled it out mechanically.

“Hey Ronin?” She paused, waiting. For some banter, probably. Clint drew himself up and tried to find some in the recesses of his withered sense of humor.

“What, no metrosexual call and response? Are you taking me for granted now, Skye?”

“‘Metrosexual,’ seriously? That’s so fucking ‘90s. You’re oooold, old man. You probably use a cane when you’re not around ninja-badassing.”

“The better to defend my lawn with, my dear. To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?” Clint asked, because the alternative was shoving a throwing knife in his eye to avoid more banter. Fucking ironic, that.

“I’m gonna tell AC.”  
“You’re-- what?” He should have gone with the throwing knife.

“I’m gonna tell AC about us, I-- look. It’s not good for you or me or him, right? Him not knowing? Because… because he’s family, in a weird twisted way and I know that’s not horribly healthy and probably I need a therapist which I’m pretty sure half of SHIELD does too and--”

“Skye? Breathe. I’ll still be here a minute from now.” Frozen to the seat with what he was hearing.

“Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Look, here’s the teal deer: whatever happened to him, he’s really not down with lies right now. And he told me the hard truth about my past, when he probably really shouldn’t have. And I think you… I think you and I are in the same boat; we care about him and he cares about us. Right? Like… okay, not like some stupid daddy shit, just… like family.”

“Skye--”

“No-- Ronin, look. It’s going to come back and bite you on the ass if you keep hiding it, and man I feel sick about hiding it, and you wouldn’t be in this mess except for me--”

“Okay, Skye, that is the _exact opposite_ of the actual situation here--”

“-- and anyway I’m going to go tell him.”

Well, okay, that’s one decision made then, huh universe? Fuck it anyway. Clint clambered out of Lola and headed straight for the stairs. Screw anyone who saw him-- they were probably all at the hotel.

“Okay, so, when are you going to tell him? I should be with you-- I need to be there, take my share of the blame.” Which is all of it, and god forbid he let any of this come down on her head.

“Yeah, no time. I’m heading up there right now. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure it’s all right for you.” She hung up.

“Goddamnit,” Clint said into the open air, and began to run.  
_____

Skye stood outside the door-- the hatch, really-- for just long enough to rub her hands on her jeans, then breezed right in before her feet could weld themselves to the floor.

“Skye, what--?” AC looked up at her from his desk, blinking. As near as she could tell, he hadn’t been looking at anything in particular on it-- there were no papers or files in sight, nothing even quickly hidden. The laptop was shut and idle, all the knick-knacks squared away and ready for flight. Apart from a little brushed aluminum card case lying near one pinky, the only things on his desk were his hands, palm down in what she imagined was a centering gesture.

Except he really wasn’t very centered, and somehow that was what gave her the courage to keep coming, spitting it out as she went:

“Ronin.”

He froze.

She froze-- reflexively. 

They stayed that way for a moment, until Skye was pretty damn sure they were in a two-rabbit standoff and that was pretty fucking absurd, because dorky as he could be, Coulson was pure predator.

Didn’t look like one at the moment, though-- hadn’t, much, the last while. That was why she was doing this, right? Just tell him, get it out of the way, and then she and he could deal with whatever fallout-- she’d wear the fucking bracelet again, she’d take being kicked out, just to have it done and in the open.

Not that long ago, the thought of getting kicked out would have had her running for the hills, but he wasn’t gonna do that, she was quite certain. Not over this. Not after what he’d told her, what he’d tracked down for her.

Not after that broken, brilliant, blessed smile that had cracked his lips when she pulled him out of the theta wave machine. 

“Ronin,” she said again, tangling her hands together until the pain from her fingernails could ground her enough not to run. “I know he was here. He was helping us.”

“You do?” He hadn’t so much gone blank as still-- it was… weird and very wrong. Vaguely terrifying. But if she stopped now it was only going to get worse. If she kept going, she could maybe save them all-- Himself, herself, and Ronin too-- bring them all in together to figure shit out. As a fam-- team. Ronin hated “family.” 

‘Cause she knew AC needed help, yeah, and she knew she could use all the help she could get, and Ronin had sounded so fucking lost, and AC could maybe find him again, the way he’d found him once, they way he kept finding her. If they could find each other that would… help. 

“Yeah. He asked me to help him find you. And I did. Because I knew him in the Rising Tide. We used to work together. He, um, he gave me-- information. To help me get into SHIELD. And--”

She stopped short as she saw AC’s eyes leave her and dart towards the doorway.

“And I think you should let me tell this story, Skye.” Ronin said from where he was looming in the arch, easing himself inside on silent feet. He turned to look at AC, who was still so very motionless, eyes limpid in the dim light, looking between them both now.

“No, but--”

“Yeah, but. Boss, she never knew why I wanted her on the Bus. She never gave up anything that could be used against you; she’s clean. Clear. You already know why she wanted into SHIELD. The rest is mine to tell.”

They both waited, standing in front of his desk like children on report. Skye realized she was holding her breath only when AC’s eyes flicked to her, then to the door, and she let it out with a surprisingly sustained sigh.

She looked back once as she left, to see Ronin standing there, shadow and gold, in front of the barricade of AC’s desk.

____

 

Phil tracked Skye to the door and then dropped his gaze, afraid to meet Clint’s eyes. He watched from the corner of his eye as Clint shuffled his feet and reached up to slide the mask off of his face, tucking it behind his belt. He rubbed the back of his neck and shifted from foot to foot for a moment before he finally began speaking.

“It’s not… I didn’t...That isn’t what it sounds like,” Clint said. “She wasn’t trying to get details of classified ops or anything. I just… gave her some pointers. Tried to…” 

Phil risked a glance at Clint’s face, and Clint trailed off.

“Why, Clint? Why would you DO this? To me? How could you do this to me?” Phil asked. He pressed his hands over his face and propped his elbows on the desk. He took a deep breath, and then another, trying to steady himself. Trying to process. Trying to keep from throwing himself across the desk, fairly certain that Clint wouldn’t catch him if he did. 

The chair across the desk squeaked as Clint flopped into it. Phil flinched away at a light touch on his wrist; even such soft contact made his skin burn. He swallowed hard and counted each breath, trying to keep himself calm in the face of the hot disappointment that scorched his gut and coiled around his heart.

“Babe, I…” The endearment from Clint bit through Phil’s calm facade. He doubted that Clint meant it, not now that Phil was… 

“No, Barton,” he spat, struggling to project anger instead of hurt. “I don’t think you can call me that right now.”

“Phil, come on,” Clint cajoled. “I can explain, if you’ll just give me a second.”

“I’m sure I would love an explanation,” Phil said. He tried to rally himself, but all he wanted to do was curl into a small ball. Why would Clint have kept this from him? What was the endgame? What had Phil done to lose his trust? Could Clint somehow see how _weak_ Phil was? 

“My connection with Skye started a long time back, before Nat planted the bugs,” Clint began. “The Rising Tide was an assignment --well, kind of, for myself -- a while ago. They turned out to be... convenient when I needed Ronin to keep an eye on SHIELD. After all that shit with… Loki.” Phil tried not to choke at the name. How had Clint gotten to the point where he could say it so calmly? “And then we heard you were being given a new team. I gave Skye the nudge in your direction. Partially just to look for you, and then we found you, and she found you and it was… Well, I might have pushed her on the recruitment a bit. Told her to try trusting you.”

“You _put someone on my team_ to spy on me, Clint,” Phil said. There was an ache in his chest, and he wondered if his damaged heart could physically break - if this would be too much for the repair job to survive. If Clint could already see him falling apart, see him spilling onto the floor.

“Aw, no, Phil! I just… she’s a good asset. I knew she would be good, that you could use her.” Clint rested his elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of him. Phil refused to respond to the mute appeal in the pose. “I tried to keep in contact with her in the early days. Watch out for her, ya know. I just… I needed someone onsite to keep an eye on you. I was worried.” Phil felt a flash of power when Clint was the first to lower his gaze, breaking eye contact. “About you.”

Bullshit. Also: beside the point.

“I don’t give a shit about your excuses for why you started spying, started this deception. I want to know why you kept it from me.” Phil said. He drew on years of training to keep his voice level. “What you were hoping to learn about me. In Wichita, I asked you, I flat-out asked you what else I didn’t know. If there was anything you were keeping from me.”

Clint cringed, eyes flicking back to Phil’s face before looking down again. Phil fought off the urge to reach across the desk and shake Clint until his teeth rattled. Force the truth out of him. Clear away all the layers of _deception_.

“I wasn’t trying to _learn_ anything, Phil,” Clint said slowly. Phil hardened his eyes as Clint slowly looked up to meet his gaze. “I was just trying to watch you. Keep an eye on you. See you.”

“Bullshit,” Phil said aloud this time. “If it was so damned harmless, your association with Skye would have come up before now. You wouldn’t have hidden it for so long. You would have told me!”

“I couldn’t, Phil,” Clint said, tilting his head and studying Phil’s face. Phil felt exposed, swallowing hard and struggling desperately to keep his hands folded in his lap, to keep from hiding his face. “I had to protect Skye, too. I didn’t want you to think she was… She wasn’t responsible for any of this. She still has no idea who I am. To her, I’m just Ronin. Some hacker. Some hacker with a history with SHIELD and a history with you, and someone who just wants to protect you. She… I don’t think she even realized I was using her to look after you until… recently.”

Phil felt a line of tension seep out of his spine: maybe Skye, at least, had not betrayed him, not been intentionally lying. Phil knew how manipulative Agent Barton could be, knew how adept he was at hiding the truth. Phil had used those traits often as his handler. 

“What is Skye’s role in all of this?” Phil asked, needing the truth of this, at least. He had to be able to trust that Skye had proved herself on her own, that her actions on the Bus, with the team, had been guided by her own conscience and not by… Clint’s agenda. “Do I need to put the bracelet back?”

Phil watched Clint’s entire body still, horror fill his eyes as if Clint just now realized that there could - would - be consequences for Skye, as if he had believed he alone could bear the responsibility. Good. Let him focus on Skye. Keep him from looking too closely at Phil, seeing too clearly.

“No! I mean... I mean, that’s for you to decide, I guess,” Clint stammered. “But she earned her way onto the team. I promise, Phil, I didn’t help her with anything but initial contact. She had no inside information. Did it all herself. Everything since you picked her up, that was all her.”

Phil ran over his history with Skye, searching for evidence of outside forces, see if she had utilized anything other than her own skills, her own knowledge. No, Skye was Skye: not an open book, but one with easy to turn pages. And Phil was fairly certain he could still trust Clint on this; Clint had always had opinions about the care and training of young agents and assets.

“I haven’t seen your hand in her actions,” Phil said slowly. Relief flooded Clint’s face, vanishing at the next words. “You still should have told me. I don’t… Clint, I can’t trust you. I needed the truth.”

And that was the root of it: too many lies. Phil was beginning to wonder if anything in his life from before was real. If Clint couldn’t be trusted...

“Ba…” Phil raised an eyebrow, interrupting the endearment. He hoped Clint couldn’t see how badly the affection, the fondness in that term hurt. Phil just couldn’t trust that affection right now. Not when Clint had been _lying_ for so long.

“Phil, she’d just gotten the bracelet,” Clint said. He slouched lower in his chair, ducking his head. “How could I tell you that she had a connection to me when you weren’t sure you trusted _her_? I just… I couldn’t say anything yet.”

“You should have,” Phil snapped. He stood and leaned on the desk, fingers curling tightly around the edge to hide their shaking. “You owed me the truth. You lied by omission the first time I came to see you in New York.” Phil took a breath, keeping his eyes open to fight down memories of Clint’s hands on him, the heat of him pressed to Phil’s back, the hardness and gentleness of him moving above, around, inside. “You didn’t tell me that you already knew I was alive. You didn’t tell me you had bugged my Bus. You just… I can’t trust you, Clint. Not around me, and not around my team. You could have endangered my missions. You could have put Skye at risk.” 

Phil knew what lies and coverups could do, knew how they could break a man, ruin a woman’s life, risk missions and teams and the tentative bonds of teamwork and family. Phil knew how they could break someone’s will, leave them longing for death, wishing it would all just… 

“You could have just come to me,” Phil said. He would have given Clint the truth, _had_ given Clint the truth. Nearly all of the truth. Everything but this one secret that had to stay hidden to protect them both. “Asked anything you wanted to know. I would have told you anything.” Except this. Except that SHIELD destroyed him, reached in his head and played with what they found. Phil turned his back to hide this one lie that he had to maintain to protect himself, protect Clint. “Instead you chose to betray me.”

“Phil, no!” Phil heard the chair squeak as Clint stood, boots thumping to the floor. “I would never do that! I’d never hurt you like that. I couldn’t!”

“You did,” Phil retorted. He blinked hard to keep the tears that stung his eyes from falling. He hoped they weren’t showing in his voice. “You say you can’t, you won’t, but you have. You did. This… No, Barton.” He had to end this before he managed to say something he would regret. Before he said too much. “I think I’m done here. You can see yourself out, I’m sure.”

“Whoa,” Clint gasped. “No. Time-out. You don’t get to shove me out of your office so you can stew.” 

Phil tucked his arms around himself, trying to hold together the tatters of his nerves, his frayed and cracking heart. Clint was too close; if he heard what had happened, he’d know how lost Phil still felt. They had… worked… together so long, Clint knew him. Knew his body, knew his mind. Clint would see the holes. Would know how weak Phil was, how useless, how worthless...

“I feel like I’m missing part of this conversation,” Clint said slowly. “Is this about what happened to you while Centipede had you, because I have to say, getting yourself caught like that was fucking stupid.”

The words shot through Phil like a knife, and he spun, squaring his shoulders and clenching his jaw to keep from shouting. “This is about you, Barton. Not Centipede, not SHIELD, just _you_. You were the one who lied to me. You were the one who tried to use a member of my team against me.”

“Stop right there, _Sir_ ,” Clint snarled the title, and Phil felt the distance stretch between them.“I would never, _never_ try to turn any member of any team you were leading against you. Number one, I wouldn’t do that to you. Number two, it wouldn’t work. Your people are loyal, and with damned good reason. This team is as loyal to you as Nat is, as _I am_.”

Phil’s gut twisted. Time to ask the question and hope for an honest answer.

“Loyalty? Is that what this is from you? But who are you loyal to, Barton?” Phil snarled back. Phil slammed both fists onto the desktop to keep from throwing a punch at Clint, and Clint flinched as if he felt the by-proxy blow. “Is SHIELD using you to keep an eye on me? _Are you spying for Fury_? Or are you watching me for someone else?”

“The fuck?” The anger drained out of Clint’s shoulders, and his face twisted in confusion, eyebrows drawn together in a way that Phil found - used to find - endearing. “How did Fury come into this? He's the one who’s made sure the Avengers don’t know you're alive. And, thanks to you, I’m an Avenger. Fury doesn’t know that I know about you.” 

Another lie in Phil’s life.

“As for SHIELD,” Clint snapped, and his hands curled into fists on his knees, “you know what they’ve done to me! They’ve lied to me every step of the way about you. They let me think you were dead, Phil. Gone. They kept me on so short a leash for so long that Nat practically humped my leg when we finally got to go out in the field together again. They lied to me, kept me out of the action, chained me up, and’ve had me playing babysitter to a bunch of baby agents for months.”

Clint jumped to his feet and flung his arms wide, dramatics and distractions. “I would never give anything about you up to SHIELD, Phil. You’re… way more important than that.”

“Important,” Phil repeated dully. He remembered what Clint had said during that weekend in Bed-Stuy, about the difficulties of finding a bedmate. Spies and groupies, he’d called his options. Phil knew which side of that he fell on.

“So important that you spied on me?” Phil asked quietly. “So important that you lied to me, didn’t trust me, and used me to get you off.”

“Used…” Clint’s face went pale. “Phil! God, babe! No. You can’t believe… You know what I…”

“Okay, I get that it was easier to go back to the familiar,” Phil felt hollowed out by the realization that he had been the “comfortable choice.” He thought that the history of them would have gotten him honesty, but he also knew the kinds of people that could be sharing Hawkeye’s bed. “I mean, I know I’m not… But I thought that at least you respected me enough to give me the truth in exchange for the… the sex. That was all I wanted, Clint.” He dropped into the desk chair, slumping with exhaustion.

“Phil, babe…” The gentleness in Clint’s voice made Phil’s breath catch. The chair squeaked again as Clint sank back into it.

“I asked you not to call me that anymore,” Phil interrupted grimly. He marginally straightened his shoulders. “It seems a bit gauche under the circumstances.”

“Phil, I would never just use you for… that.” Clint said, eyes wide and dark. “You have to believe I didn’t mean it to be a lie.”

“Then what the fuck did you expect it to be? You didn’t tell me the truth,” Phil snapped. He ran his palms over his face, digging his fingertips hard into the beginnings of a blinding headache at his temples. “That is, by definition, a lie. I’m done, Clint. I’m just… What did you think would happen when I found out? Did you just intend to keep this lie going forever? Were you just going to use me, use _Skye_ forever?” Another thought occurred to him. “Is that why you were on the Bus that night, to make contact with her?” 

Phil dropped his eyes to his desk, quite certain he could not face the truth of his accusation in Clint’s face. If Clint was building his network, well, it was a good idea to distract Phil before making contact. He drummed his fingers on the edge of his desk, and then cringed when Clint jumped to his feet and began shouting.

“Fine, you know what, Phil? Fuck you. You knew, you _fucking knew_ what you meant to me. Mean to me. You knew what I was saying when you came to see me. You knew why I was here that night. You damn well know why I’m in fucking Peru right now.” 

Phil cowered under the tone and the words. Was he misreading this? Did Clint mean… No. Spies and groupies… and Phil was just familiar. Safe. Comfortable.

“If you know what you mean to me, then you know why I set her up here. You’d have done the same damn thing. You’re a spy too, Phil. Hell, you’re THE spy! So you know why I didn’t tell you. You _understand_ secrets.”

Or maybe it was...

“So it was business?” Phil asked. Never get involved within the agency, he’d told Ward. Should have heeded his own advice. “Just another op?” 

“What? Fuck you, Phil!” Clint snapped. “Don’t twist my words. I was just trying to… watch out for you. If you can’t handle that, then fuck you. You want someone without lies all around them, don’t get in bed with a spy. But that’s my life. That’s _your_ life, Phil. So take your hypocritical bullshit and go find yourself someone in the real world, someone with a normal life. Someone not me, because I’m done. Fuck you, Phil. I’m out of here and out of this.” He stood so quickly the chair fell over with a crash.

Phil felt the last steady edge of the cliff crumble out from under his feet. He kept his face impassive as his stomach clenched, and his heart felt as if it stopped for a beat: Phil remembered what it felt like when his heart stopped.

He forced himself to answer as blandly as he could. “That’s fine, Agent Barton.” He lifted the the silver card case from the edge of the blotter. For all the calm in his voice, he could not stop himself from throwing it as hard as he could at Clint’s head, not surprised -- but maybe a bit disappointed -- when it was neatly caught out of the air. “Make sure to take all your toys with you. Stay _away_ from my team. Stay away from me.”

“Easier done than said, _Agent_ ,” Clint snapped, and he grabbed his mask off his belt and dropped it over his head. 

Phil kept his face impassive until the door closed, and then he dropped his head onto his desk. His shoulders heaved, but he could not make a sound, and no tears would squeeze out of his hot, dry eyes. After several moments, he took a deep breath and opened the bottom drawer of his desk. He pulled out a bottle of whisky, ignoring the glass beside it, and carried the bottle over to the couch to get busy trying to forget.

____

He came down the stairs like a hulking black puppy with his tail between his legs, drooping at all members. Skye was off the couch and on her feet so fast it made her head spin for a moment.

"Oh, god, what happened? You're not in trouble? We're not in trouble? What did he say?" She'd stopped him with her hands on his forearms, and he looked up (presumably) at her.

"It's all right, Skye. You're fine. I... you're in the clear. I took care of it."

"Then why do you look like pounded shit, Ronin?" She waited for him to say something dumb and guyish like _oh I'm fine_ or something, but he didn't. Just turned his face away, even though she couldn't fucking see it. 

"There... was fallout. More than I expected."

"Shit, what can I-- how can I help? No--" when he tried to shake his head at her-- "don't try to say this should be all on you. We were in this together. We both kept this from him. What can I do? I'll go up there and explain--"

"You won't, Skye." One gloved hand drifted up to her cheek. "It's a sweet thought, and it's a lot more than I deserve. You won't because what went wrong had nothing to do with you. He and I we... have our history. Had. Whatever." His voice was moist beneath the mask, and Skye gave in to impulse and hugged him, tight. After a moment, those big arms came around and returned it. They were stunningly strong-- much stronger than Ward's-- and the warmth of him was comforting even though she knew things were supposed to be the other way around. His heart thumped softly beneath her ear.

"Please tell me what I can do for _you_ then?" she asked, and he pressed a kiss to her forehead, muffled through the fine fabric of the mask.

"Just keep an eye on him."

"I'd do that anyway."

"I know you would. You're amazing that way. Skye?" He pulled back, took her between his hands and held her at arm's length. "What is it?"

That was when she realized she had tears in her eyes. Fuck the man anyway, that wasn't fair.

"I, um, I'm sorry. I just... I thought for a while…. What AC told me, he told me that all that time I’d been bouncing from one place to the next, thinking nobody wanted me, there were these SHIELD agents who were watching me from a distance, keeping me safe from… from whoever wanted to hurt me. And they… gave up a lot to do it. Some of them died. And I guess, for a while, I thought that maybe you'd been one of the agents who looked after me. And I know you're not, I just... I guess I wanted to meet one of them. To thank them for looking out for me even when I didn't know they were there. I... wish... if AC were himself right now...."

"Skye, there's a fine line between protecting and spying, and apparently Phil and I disagreed on it. Which is, well, ironic. But you... look. I kinda got you into this more than I intended, and I was fucking selfish about it, okay? Don't romanticize that away. I was using you to keep Phil safe because I was too scared to do it myself. But I, um. I wish I had. Been one of those agents. The ones who watched over you. Okay? Because you deserve it." He wiped a tear away from her cheek, the wet blotting into the black fabric over his thumb. 

"You did watch over me," she whispered. 

"I did a really crappy job of it, then, and it'd be a better idea if I just left you to it, you're in good hands here, as long as you don't let the BrainTwins blow shit up," he replied, and she laughed weakly with him. It hadn't felt so crappy, sometimes it had felt like her only fucking link to sanity, but apparently he had Standards or something. He tilted his head and pulled away. "Tell you what, though. If you ever need me--"

"Yeah?"

He pulled something out of his belt and pressed it into her palm. Her fingers closed over cool metal.

"You can call me. On something other than a crappy burner phone."

She looked down, to find the case that had been sitting on Coulson's desk, and she flipped it slowly in her fingers.

"If I need you? Or if He does?"

"If _you_ need me. He can take care of his own fucking ass from now on. It's not like he ever needed my help. Although, if you wanted to updat-- no." Ronin turned to head out to the cargo bay, and she paced alongside him.

"No?"

"No, it's like giving an addict just one drink. That's for you now. It was, um, it was Phil's. Press here," he pointed out a raised insignia, "and here," the hinge of the case, "to make the thing work. Yeah, I know, it’s kinda cheesy spy stuff; Phil can be... kind of a fanboy sometimes. Ask anyone who saw him with the Avengers." She laughed a little, because he seemed to expect it, but the mention of the team he'd brought together and died with hurt, just a bit. "I've reset it; once you touch that, it'll be biometrically locked to your print. You'll figure it out fast-- you're smarter than me. It should work pretty much anywhere. In case of emergency." He was already at the door, and he paused with his hand on it.

"In case of emergency? How about if I just want to talk?" He ducked his fucking head. Goddamn ninja being cute. Jerk.

"Yeah, I'd... I'd like that." He left then, and had disappeared into the shadows by the time she got out the door.

Skye looked back down at the little apparently-not-a-card-case in her hand. Half of her wanted to try it out right that instant, because even for SHIELD that was a high-tech little baby. The other half knew she'd better give them both some space (and anyway, nothing was worse than having your card case go off in your pants while you were trying to sneak off an airfield.)

Instead, she passed back through the common areas of the Bus, swimming in the silence and the low light, and drifted up the staircase.

The door to Coulson's office was closed. She paused only a moment before opening it.

AC was sitting on his couch, staring blankly at his desk. There was an open bottle of whiskey in one hand, and a look so completely broken on his face that Skye nearly backed out. It wasn't as bad as the theta wave machine, she told herself. It wasn't as bad as that, so she could handle it, right? He'd chosen her, and she'd chosen him, and however sad that black-and-gold broad-shouldered badass sneaking off the plane was, her loyalty was with this man, in this room, in his rumpled suit. 

He'd been sequestered in here for so long after they'd found him that she'd begun to panic. After what had happened at the SciTech Academy, Skye had begun to think he was getting better-- she'd thought she was getting better.

"Better," was all relative, clearly. And the problem with having family was, as Ronin had said, they could get a little dysfunctional. Family could _hurt_ so bad. 

Skye made her way to the couch and dropped down beside AC, gently taking the bottle from his yielding hand and taking a sip. The whiskey burned on its way down. He didn't look over at her, but he didn't move either, or do anything but sigh. She put the bottle on the floor between them and folded her hands, staring where he stared, providing what companionship he would allow.  
_____

Clint arrived in front of his apartment building late at night and paused, looking up at the cracked brick facade with a rueful grin. A few flights up and he'd be home, inside his battered, grubby little hideaway, with his scruffy, one-eyed dog coming to lick his face. He could lay down his duffel bag and his burdens at the door, fall onto the couch, and bury himself in Lucky's fur.

Maybe Kate would come by and get on his case for getting drunk. It'd be good to hear the concern that rode beneath her frustration. Or maybe Natasha would show up and sit there with him, radiating disapproval and sympathy in equal measure. Clint wanted that, from either of them, wanted the dandruffy dog fur up his nose. Anything to turn the world right-side up again, to know he was cared for still.

He turned his key in the lock and went inside.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: They break up at the end. It’s not final, but it won’t be resolved in this story.
> 
> Series timeline: we have three more stories planned in the series arc: two during the AoS run and one off the season finale that _will_ feature a reunion, no matter how AU we’ve got to go to get there.  
>  Up next in the series timeline: Clint goes to a dark place and Ronin comes to the rescue. (Coming in March.) 
> 
> Larger Two-Man Universe:  
> As a band-aid over all that angst, faeleverte wrote a porny happy get-together piece set in the past for these two, the first of a few planned lighter fics set in the Two-Man Rule ‘verse. It will be posting 11 Feb, in lieu of a new episode.
> 
> Two Man Series
> 
> Your comments and kudos keep us writing when things (that is, the show and therefore our arc) get tough. And you’re guaranteed a response from our talkative selves. All feedback welcomed and greedily hoarded! 
> 
> You can find us on Tumblr:
> 
>  
> 
> [Kathar](http://kat-har.tumblr.com)  
> [faeleverte](http://faeleverte.tumblr.com)


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